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Thursday, October 20, 2005While the severity of malpractice claims continues to rise - growing at a rate of 7.5 percent annually - the frequency of malpractice claims has decreased by one percent over the past year, according to the 2005 Hospital Professional Liability and Physician Liability Benchmark Analysis released today by Aon (NYSE: AOC). This is the first time in the history of the study the frequency trend decreased in claims for both hospitals and physicians. Greg Larcher, assistant director and actuary of Aon Risk Consultants and author of the analysis explained: "We believe that legislative reforms in several states over the last few years are contributing to the reduction in claims. In addition, the medical malpractice availability and affordability crisis of the last several years has resulted in a rapidly growing alternative market. Healthcare systems now have a greater financial incentive to reduce their cost of risk." Translation: More hospitals are insuring themselves these days, and so have a greater incentive to prevent medical errors. And tort reform has helped, too. It isn't clear, however, what they mean by "severity" of claims. Is it that claims for severe injuries are increasing or that the monetary amount of awards continues to increase? posted by Sydney on 10/20/2005 07:47:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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