Beyond Dead Reckoning: Measures of Medical Injury Burden, Malpractice Litigation, and Alternative Compensation Models from Utah and Colorado

Abstract:     
From 1995 to 1998, we conducted an empirical research project in Utah and Colorado that was designed to estimate the burden of medical injury and the performance of the medical malpractice systems in those states. Our aim was to test the results of a similar project, the Harvard Medical Practice Study, conducted a decade earlier in New York. Part I of this Article recaps the intellectual and methodological heritage of the Utah-Colorado Medical Practice Study (UCMPS). Part II describes important changes in the health care system and peculiarities of the New York study that made repetition of a large-scale study of iatrogenic injury worthwhile. Part III describes the origins of the UCMPS itself. Part IV outlines methods and results from each of the four main areas of analysis that comprised the study: (1) incidence of medical injury; (2) malpractice claiming behavior; (3) the economic consequences of medical injury; and (4) the feasibility of alternative approaches to compensation. In conclusion, we discuss implications of the findings for health care policy.

JEL Classifications: K00, K13, K41

Accepted Paper Series