Holding civic medicine accountable: will Morreim's liability scheme work in a disaster?
In Holding Health Care Accountable, E. Haavi Morreim differentiates between duties of expertise and resource duties, arguing for tort liability respecting the former and contract liability respecting the latter. Though Morreim's book addresses ordinary clinical medicine, her liability scheme may also be relevant elsewhere. Focusing on disaster medicine, and especially the medical management of violent mass disasters (e.g., where terrorists have deployed weapons of mass destruction), I argue in this essay that Morreim's classification of duties still fits, but that it is difficult to hold government powers accountable for their many resource and expertise duties. This difficulty is compounded by political arrangements that foist under-funded mandates for disaster services on healthcare providers. As a result of such arrangements, hospitals and clinicians are prone to liability for expenditures and clinical interventions that are beyond their scope. This problem can be mitigated, I argue, by examining and clarifying the apparent social compact between society and healthcare.
Trotter
Griffin
G
Center for Health Care Ethics and Emergency Medicine Division, Saint Louis University, Health Services Center, Salus Center, 3645 Lafayette Ave., St. Louis, MO 63104, USA. trotterc@slu.edu
D023482:Bioterrorism / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006077:Government Agencies; D006801:Humans; D016365:Liability, Legal / Q000191:economics; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D011635:Public Health Administration; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D040841:Resource Allocation / Q000191:economics; D012308:Risk Management; D012941:Social Responsibility; D014481:United States