LAWSUITS AGAINST HOSPITALS AND OTHER HEALTH CARE entities alleging liability for patient harms are brought and settled routinely in the United States. However, the settlement by health care giant Tenet Healthcare, on the eve of trial on March 23, 2011, in Preston v Tenet Healthsystem Memorial Medical Center, falls outside the norm of routine entity liability cases. The class of plaintiffs in Ne...

In the past, courts have struck down or severely limited attempts by health care providers to use written contracts to reduce their liability for negligence, deeming such agreements to be contrary to public policy.' The basic reason is that courts have not traditionally viewed the relationship of patient and health care provider as a contractual one, freely entered by both parties. Rather, phys...

The past few years have seen a sharp increase in premiums for medical malpractice liability insurance, which health care professionals buy to protect themselves from the costs of being sued (see Figure 1 on page 2). On average, premiums for all physicians nationwide rose by 15 percent between 2000 and 2002—nearly twice as fast as total health care spending per person. The increases during that ...