Asymmetry between the cost of medical litigations and the number of medical litigations

Abstract

The impact that rising costs of litigations has had on many countries has seen society deprived of good quality health care and a substantial extra-expenditure in health budgets. The financial and societal costs of medical malpractice litigations have also been a growing cause for concern in the developing country of South Africa. This paper attempted to contribute to the knowledge of this problem in the South African setting by examining settlement costs of medical litigations in one province of the country over a 6 year period, and examining the relationship between these costs and the number of litigations. No correlation was found between the number of litigations and the costs of litigations, this indicates that, aside from the number of litigations, other factors are responsible for rising costs of litigation. The paper recommends that the department should continue monitoring the environmental costs of litigations for budgetary and management purposes; and the need to introduce an electronic integrated medical litigations reporting system, as well as tort reforms to curb the costs of the litigations. This work also calls for substantial further research in terms of what disciplines, what medical errors, and what circumstances greatly influence litigation outcomes.