Medical malpractice: some implications of contract and arbitration in HMOs.
The "crisis" of medical malpractice has led to increasing advocacy of abandoning the fault-finding and litigation approaches. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) afford unique institutional settings for developing alternatives. Explicit contracts between provider-managers and member-patients can allow consumers to determine how risk-prevention-and overall quality-they are willing to invest in. Not just principles of economic efficiency, but also of distributional equity can inform HMO performance-standard contracts; and arbitration may be the best mode for managing disputes arising from them.
D003098:Collective Bargaining / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D003284:Contract Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005376:Financial Management / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008318:Malpractice / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008503:Medical Staff / Q000592:standards; D014481:United States