While holding these insitutions, be it hospitals or HMOs, more accountable, this reform plan would drive up the insurance premiums of the insitution with greater frequency of medical injury. On second thought, however, this could be a flaw of the reform plan since it would be difficult, then, to determine if the medical injury was in fact the product of a physician error or a system failure. Nonetheless, this malpractice reform option seems to be the only viable one, holding physician as well as insitution responsible, and the only one which could insure that a similar preventable accident would not take place again in the near future. Quite often patients can be stable one moment and in cardiac arrest or other distress the next because their bodies are under significant stress due to existing injuries. I think it is hard to punish care providers for complications that don't occur as a result of negligence because a lot of times no one knows exactly why or how these injuries and complications occur.
Doctors are human, and patients are human as well.
In spite of all we know, the human body is still a mystery in some ways and that puts some uncertainty into the practice of medicine. Although doctors need to be aware of that risk, patients do as well. In our litigation-obsessed society, there is a fine line to walk between upholding quality of care and expecting doctors to play God when that is clearly an impossible feat. I don't think providers should be held accountable for any injury as a result of care. Adding to what has been said, I dont think that it is that easy to define clear lines of who should get blame or who should be held accountable.