And if you do it often enough, it creates its own problems. Let's take a quick look at why the tort system is not a good way of improving the quality of managed care. The patient is already dead or grievously injured . The real point is to resolve medical disputes in time to save the patient. Tort verdicts are forged by juries and juries are not doctors.
Juries can return verdicts based on other things besides what the plaintiff actually did .
According to news reports, the winning attorney in the famous multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Aetna U.S. Healthcare of California had urged the jury to send a loud warning to the HMO industry. The HMOs are corporate executives practicing medicine where profit is the motive, not the best interest of the patient. Imagine how a family practitioner would feel if clobbered by a multimillion-dollar malpractice award not because she deserved it, but because the public was concerned about what her colleagues might be doing. Tort verdicts that are not based on plaintiff behavior lose their power to influence behavior. Suppose you had spent millions of dollars to develop a good utilization management system with evidence-based guidelines and independent expert reviewers, and you still get hit upside the head in the courts.