Peter Orszag has a nice piece on the future of medical malpractice reform. In it he gives a big shout-out to former Petrie-Flom fellow (now Cornell Law Prof) Mike Frakes and discusses papers Mike worked on while at the Center. Hopefully policymakers are listening. From Orszag’s piece:
Capping damages for medical malpractice can do little to solve this problem, but changing the standard against which doctors are evaluated would. In particular, doctors should have a safe harbor from malpractice suits if they follow evidence-based protocols published by a professional medical association. The Center for American Progress and others have proposed exactly this type of approach, and have also provided details about how it could work.
Professor Michael Frakes of Cornell Law School has done pathbreaking research on the benefits of moving away from customary-practice rules. In a new analysis, Frakes and Anupam Jena, a professor of health-care policy at Harvard Medical School, examine how malpractice laws affect mortality rates, avoidable hospitalizations, adverse events to mothers during childbirth and other measures of health-care quality. They then assess two types of reforms: changes to damages caps and changes to the local customary-practice standard.