Clinical assessment of malpractice case scenarios in an anesthesiology department

Abstract

Study Objective: To determine whether anesthesiologists agree with each other when assessing actual malpractice clinical scenarios, whether their assessments comport with the actual malpractice verdicts, and whether they can accurately guess jury verdicts. Design: Survey study requesting anesthesiologists to review 12 malpractice case scenarios, administered twice. Setting: Academic medical center department of anesthesiology. Measurements and Main Results: Mean interphysician agreement, mean Likert values assessing relative negligence, mean agreement with jury verdicts, mean success at predicting actual jury verdicts for 12 actual jury verdict case scenarios. Respondent anesthesiologists appeared homogeneous by training and years of experience. They showed high (>80%) agreement among themselves in their assessments of the malpractice case scenarios over the two administrations ( p = 0.13). In addition, mean Likert values as to relative negligence assessments by respondent anesthesiologists were not significantly different between administrations by case ( p = 0.09 to 1.00). However, of the eight cases with complete or virtually complete agreement between respondent anesthesiologists, three (37.5%) disagreed with the verdict rendered by the actual juries. In addition, anesthesiologists showed significant disagreement (>30%) among themselves in four of the case scenarios, indicating there may not be agreement regarding the standard of care in these clinical circumstances. Finally, anesthesiologists predicted jury verdicts poorly, with success rates of 50% or less in seven of the 12 case scenarios. Conclusions: For this sample of homogeneous anesthesiologists who demonstrated high clinical agreement, it appears that the malpractice system may not be able to function on its own terms in adjudicating malpractice claims. Although there was agreement among respondent anesthesiologists, these assessments were in direct opposition to actual verdicts, a significant percentage of cases resulted in disagreements as to the appropriate standard of care, and anesthesiologists could not successfully predict jury verdicts. The malpractice system appears to be operating far from its theoretical ideal if these results could be applied more generally. Thus, in practice, the legal system, which is to provide an optimal level of injury deterrence, may be a poor method to limit patient injury, improve patient safety, and provide compensation to negligently injured patients in the health delivery system.