Our experience is that malpractice events, claims and results have improved in the last six years. He acknowledges that bigness helps, both in leveraging premium reductions and in producing enough data to justify lower malpractice rates with the clinic's carrier, the Texas Medical Liability Trust, affiliated with the Texas Medical Association. But the most important element of the clinic's success, he says, is a systematic strategy that stresses utilization management, quality assurance, protocol development and a monitoring process. Still, Chenven eschews absolutes when it comes to the issue of whether in general managed care results in a greater malpractice threat to physicians. There are no easy sound bites.
Nobody knows what the truth is.
We're just in the early phase. Some physicians feel more certain. Lawsuits are up. The doctor has to cut corners. Unless you cut corners you can't save money under managed care.