Medical Directors Should Help Improve Quality and Reduce Liability

Improve patient safety and reduce medical errors.

Considering the complex nature of medical practice, however, and the multitude of interventions that each patient receives, a high error rate in medicine is perhaps not surprising. Health care professionals such as physicians, nurses, and pharmacists are trained to be careful and to function at a high level of efficiency. Notwithstanding, if a system is working at 99.9% efficiency, the 0.1% err...

Directors’ and officers’ liability insurance and the cost of debt

Using hand-collected data on directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance), we analyze the effect of D&O insurance on the cost of debt. We find that higher levels of D&O insurance coverage are associated with higher at-issue bond yields (to maturity) and higher loan spreads. This evidence suggests that debtholders view D&O insurance coverage as increasing credit risk (potentially...

Liability and liability insurance for medical malpractice.

Physicians typically carry virtually complete malpractice insurance coverage. This contradicts standard theoretical predictions that under a negligence rule of liability there should be no demand for insurance, and insurance policies under moral hazard will contain co-payment provisions. It is argued that judicial 'errors' in defining negligence generate a demand for liability and legal defense...

What Went Wrong with Directors' and Officers' Liability Insurance?

Directors' and officers' liability insurance and acquirer returns