
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990                   TAG: 9003232492
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

HEALTH CARE NEEDS ALTERNATIVE TO LIABILITY SYSTEM

YOUR SERIES about intensive-care treatment of hospitalized patients did an excellent job of presenting an understandable view of a very complex topic. Certainly, many very difficult and painful decisions are faced on a daily basis by patients, their families, their treating doctors and nurses, and hospital administrators.

However, I would like to point out an underlying substrata to this entire discussion that is frequently and entirely omitted by the press in discussing liability risk. Whenever decisions are made not to treat individual patients, treating physicians must consider the possibility of liability action against them for these decisions. Although in the vast majority of cases this does not happen, the threat nevertheless is ubiquitous. Prevention against this threat is pervasive in medical treatment patterns and is enormously expensive.

Liability actions as currently structured do not deal with societal needs but rather with strictly individual concerns that are often opposed to societal needs. Furthermore, the current system meets no one's needs adequately. When injury occurs, compensation is not timely and is capriciously awarded; professionals are not adequately regulated; the court dockets are jammed, etc.

Until and unless we as a society can come up with an alternative to the current liability system, there will be no substantial progress made to curtail the cost of intensive care treatment or, for that matter, health care in general.\ C. ALAN HENRY, M.D.\ ROANOKE

by CNB