Senate Bill 1580 (passed in February 2012) directed the Governor to establish the Patient Safety and Defensive Medicine (PSDM) Workgroup to recommend a medical liability legislative proposal for the 2013 Legislative session.
The Workgroup’s efforts are guided with the following principles:
- Improve the practice environment to allow physicians to learn from medical errors and improve patient safety;
- More effectively compensate individuals who are injured as a result of medical errors; and,
- Reduce the collateral costs associated with the medical liability system including costs associated with insurance administration, litigation, and defensive medicine.
The Workgroup is required to submit its recommendations for legislation to the interim committees of the Legislative Assembly related to health care by October 1, 2012, and its draft legislation has been posted here. Public comments can be submitted to MedLiability@state.or.us
This formal public comment period ends August 31, 2012, but all of the Workgroup’s meetings are open to the public, and there is time allotted at the end of each meeting for public comment.
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