Benefits to Breast Cancer Patients of Medical Malpractice Litigation 

Powerful special interest groups want to legislate away your right to file a claim against a negligent physician, nurse or hospital, claiming that malpractice litigation results in "defensive medicine" and the performance of "unnecessary tests."  Is this true, and, if true, is that bad for patients?  A recent story in the Boston Globe suggests that the threat of medical malpractice litigation has produced surprisingly positive results for patients.

According to the article, published on May 30, 2003, Boston-area doctors increased the number of screening tests for breast cancer as a result of an education program instituted by the state's two largest malpractice insurance companies.  The insurers gave doctors a crash course of detailed information "culled from past lawsuits" concerning areas where doctors' mistakes resulted in lawsuits.  Almost immediately, the number of breast cancer-related lawsuits dropped and has remained below previous levels.  Medical specialists attribute the drop in lawsuits to primary care physicians being more alert to the early signs of breast cancer, monitoring at-risk women more closely and ordering timely mammograms and ultrasounds. 

One breast cancer expert is quoted as saying that, because of the threat of lawsuits, doctors have become "very cautious about leaving no stones unturned with breast cancer." 

According to the insurance companies involved, their investigation into the proliferation of breast cancer-related lawsuits in the early 1990s led to the conclusion that doctors were relying too much on mammograms, lacked an appropriate level of suspicion regarding potential symptoms, and did not gather sufficient information about family history and other risk factors, leading to the increase in lawsuits.  From this study, the insurers developed a "breast cancer algorithm," a flow chart telling doctors exactly how to go about evaluation of the risk of breast cancer.  Every primary care physician insured by the two companies got a copy of the flow chart.

Early detection of breast cancer is critical and is directly related to patient outcome.  When found in its earliest stages, breast cancer can by cured in about 90% of cases. 

According to Robert Hanscom, director of loss prevention for the Risk Management Foundation (RMF), which insures Harvard-affiliated doctors, malpractice cases help illustrate "underlying systemic issues" and that, once those issues are known and understood, "we're actually able to take some action."  The two companies involved intend to take a similar approach to colon cancer, another common source of malpractice litigation.