Enterprise Medical Liability and the Choice of the Responsible Enterprise

Abstract

During the last year, the proposal of “enterprise” liability for medical malpractice became a major issue in debates about health care and malpractice reform. The idea, however, was not new. In scholarly work over an extended period, we have been developing the systematic case for the concept of enterprise — or, as we originally termed it, “organizational” — liability for medical malpractice. After several years of debating the critics of our proposal to shift the focus of liability for medical injury from individual physicians to the organizations that deliver health care, we were naturally gratified that the idea was now on the national agenda.In particular, we recommended adoption of enterprise liability to President Clinton's Health Care Task Force. The Task Force did embrace a version of the idea as its own, but then encountered stiff resistance from a number of special interests.