IS ADR THE RX FOR MALPRACTICE

Health care enterprise liability could play a prominent role in evolvi ng health care reform. Under this theory,'' responsibility and liabili ty for medical malpractice shifts from the individual physician to the [HMO] and effectively provides immunity to individual physicians from medical malpractice actions.'' When malpractice disputes do arise und er the system, there is no more suitable method of resolution than ADR , says the author. A mixture of mediation and binding arbitration may be the answer to keep costs reasonable and the impact to individual ph ysicians negligible, barring actual incompetency, he says. The success ful implementation of ADR in an overhauled health care system, however , will require a greater commitment to ADR on the part of the current administration than presently exists and a concerted effort by the HMO s, their employee-physicians, and their patients to make it work.