Risk management becoming crucial focus of CME study

A review of medical malpractice cases gives physicians insight into ways to keep from being sued.

By Jay Greene, AMNews staff. July 2, 2001.

In a medical malpractice climate fraught with higher jury awards and settlements and skyrocketing liability insurance premiums, physicians are seeking better ways to protect themselves. One way some are learning to avoid medical mistakes is by reading malpractice case histories for continuing medical education credits.

While no one wants to face the nightmarish possibility of being sued, physicians who have studied malpractice cases said they gained crucial knowledge from the exercise and from taking other risk management CME courses.

"Risk management courses help me to practice defensive medicine," said Theodore Manny, MD, an anesthesiologist at Covenant Hospital, in Lubbock, Texas, who subscribes to Zarin's Medical Liability Alert. "I have always been careful, but reading the malpractice cases has made me document my cases even more.

"The biggest way to get into trouble is when you are going off-call and transferring care of patients to another doctor," Dr. Manny continued. "Juries are not your peers. They look at things a lot different than doctors. With a misdiagnosed cancer, you might be brought into that because six months earlier you contacted that patient and informed him or her, but you didn't write it down in the chart or have a record where you discussed it with a patient. That is a case waiting for a big settlement."

Many physician-owned professional liability insurers, such as Texas Medical Liability Trust, which insures Dr. Manny, give physicians discounts on their annual premiums for taking risk management CME courses. [...]