Medical Malpractice and Liability

Right now malpractice sits in a weird spot. Patients who are genuinely harmed often fight for years to get anything. At the same time doctors, hospitals and clinics pay huge malpractice premiums and practice defensive medicine, ordering tests they do not really believe in, just to survive court risk. That cost rolls into every visit and every hospital bill.

SAFECARE needs a malpractice system that does three things at once.

• Protects patients when something truly goes wrong.

• Protects the workforce from unpredictable, unlimited verdicts.

• Stops feeding a lottery style legal industry that thrives on chaos, not safety.

This is not some wild experiment. Parts of this already exist.

Some United States states have caps on non economic damages in malpractice cases while still allowing full payment for actual economic loss like lost income and future care. California’s MICRA model is the famous example, built on the same principle of a non economic cap with full economic compensation.

Countries like New Zealand and several Nordic systems use no fault medical injury compensation. Patients do not have to prove negligence once certain criteria are met. They get standardized compensation from a national fund. In return, there are strong limits on lawsuits and less courtroom theater. These systems focus on learning from errors and making patients whole, not on producing a single huge verdict every few years.

SAFECARE turns malpractice into a predictable national rulebook while keeping real patient rights.

SAFECARE creates a National Clinical Standards Board to endorse evidence based clinical practice guidelines. If a provider can show the care followed Board endorsed guidelines and the provider documented that basis in the medical record, the provider is presumed to have met the standard of care. If a provider deviates, the presumption still applies if the provider documents the clinical reasons for the deviation at the time of care. This is not immunity for recklessness or gross negligence. It is a safe harbor for doing the right thing and writing it down.

Economic damages stay fully compensable. Past and future medical costs, rehab, lost wages, long term care. Real financial harm is paid.

Non economic damages are capped nationally for Trust Fund paid claims. For claims arising in calendar years 2026 through 2030, the cap is 500,000 dollars for non catastrophic injury, and 1,000,000 dollars for catastrophic injury or death. Starting in 2031, the caps are adjusted on a published schedule. In truly exceptional cases, a court can increase the applicable cap by up to 50 percent, but only with written findings. The point is predictability without erasing accountability.

Instead of every case going through a general jury that hears medicine for the first time, SAFECARE encourages and supports specialized health courts or expert panels at the state level. These bodies can use neutral medical experts, apply the national safe harbor framework, move faster than a normal civil trial, and produce written decisions that are usable for patient safety learning.

Every compensated case feeds back into safety work. The point is not just pay and move on. It is pay, learn, and fix. When patterns show up, standards can be updated and prevention can be funded.

SAFECARE coordinates with state regulators to review malpractice insurance rates for reasonableness and to track whether premiums are actually falling as predictability increases, especially in high risk specialties and regions.