The White House has announced details of the pilot program President Barack Obama announced to help curb medical malpractice lawsuit difficulties for health care providers.
As he announced in a Sept. 9 speech, Obama has quickly acted on his promise to his political opponents to include a favorite Republican idea in the ongoing reform of the U.S. health care system. But the total spending on the idea is, at this point, set at only $25 million -- enough for a limited number of local pilot programs to seek out ways to increase patient safety and also reduce liability premiums for medical professionals.
"I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs," Obama said in the speech to a joint session of Congress.
The new program will pay for competitive grants of up to $3 million each for states and health systems to implement "evidence-based patient safety and medical liability demonstrations," according to the Sept. 17 White House announcement. It also will pay for smaller, shorter-term grants of up to $300,000 for states and health systems for planning such demonstrations.
The program's final component is a review of efforts that "improve health care quality and patient safety and decrease medical liability," set to be conducted and reported by the end of this year.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will ask for applications for demonstrations that meet its main goals: putting patient safety first, reducing preventable injuries, improving doctor-patient communication, ensuring fast compensation for medical injuries, reducing frivolous lawsuits and reducing liability premiums. The grant announcement will be posted within 30 days, the White House said, and applicants will have two months to apply. Those applications will be reviewed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality -- using a peer-review and merit-evaluation system. AHRQ will select the recipients by early 2010.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the demonstration projects might include such ideas as certificates of merit and early-disclosure programs. "We'll give funding to states to try these reforms. And then we'll study the results," she said (BestWire, Sept. 11, 2009).
(Jesse A. Hamilton, Washington bureau manager: Jesse.Hamilton@ambest.com)
