Asking patients to help shoulder malpractice costs
When his malpractice insurance premiums jumped 65% last year, Dr. Alan Falkoff felt as if he were running out of options. The family physician couldn’t keep paying such hikes and still stay in business. Then he had an idea.
The Stamford, Conn., doctor decided to charge his patients a mandatory $3 “medical malpractice” fee.
“There is a risk of a lawsuit with every patient I see, so I don’t see why patients shouldn’t share a small amount of that burden,” Falkoff said.
A small but growing number of doctors around the country agree. To combat rising malpractice insurance bills, they’re requiring that patients chip in to cover their costs.
In many cases, the debit takes the form of a voluntary surcharge, typically $10 to $25, because the government bars doctors from charging Medicare patients extra fees.
Still, a number of privately insured patients — and the uninsured — are being required to pay the fees, which the patients’ insurance won’t cover.
As I and many commentors have noted, one problem with rising malpractice insurance is that we cannot pass on these costs by raising our fees (since our fees are fixed by a different group of insurers). This method works, but does raise many questions.
If all patients did understand the impact of malpractice premiums increasing, I do believe that they would favor better solutions to this problem. While some patients do suffer from injuries due to malpractice, the money to compensate those patients must come from somewhere. Much money is spent on claims which are not really malpractice. If we had a system which more expeditiously sorted between true malpractice and unfortunate bad outcomes, then we could probably keep malpractice premiums under control. Until such day, physicians will look for creative solutions. These solutions are undesirable but understandable.