Volume 1

Medical malpractice : report of the Secretary's Commission on Medical Malpractice.

  • United States. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Secretary's Commission on Medical Malpractice.
Date:
1973
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical malpractice : report of the Secretary's Commission on Medical Malpractice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/180
    DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20201 January 16, 1973 SECRETARY'S COMMISSION ON MEDICAL MALPRACTICE Honorable Elliot L. Richardson Secretary Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Washington, D. C. 20201 Dear Mr. Secretary: On behalf of your Commission on Medical Malpractice, I have the honor to transmit our report. As you are aware, the membership of the Commission could hardly have been more diverse in background. Our work, however, brought us together and gave us new insights to the problems of medical profession- al liability. We sought to pinpoint problems and to find means for their solution, always moving toward the goal of bringing people together. With the excellent cooperation of groups and individuals concerned with many facets of this problem, we have gathered much information heretofore unavailable to the public. We found no simple solutions. We do believe, how- ever, that many of our recommendations point to ways in which the formal systems involved may be improved. We hope that some of the mechanisms we suggest as aids to prevent some disputes and fairly to resolve those that do occur will be tested in the public and private sections in order to bring high-quality health care to more Americans. We particularly point out that our recommendations are consistent with our concern that fundamental legal rights of health-care providers and patients continue to be protected. Of special concern are the rights of those persons who are unable effective- ly to protect themselves, including the unsophisti- cated poor and near poor, the mentally retarded, the institutionalized aged, prisoners, patients in mental hospitals and children.