Reassessing the Effects of a Communication-and-Resolution Program on Hospitals' Malpractice Claims and Costs

Florence R. LeCraw, Daniel Montanera and Thomas Mroz

Econ Journal Watch, 2023, vol. 20, issue 1, 1–14

Abstract: An article published by Health Affairs by Allen Kachalia and ten coauthors in 2018 compares the liability outcomes of medical facilities that implemented Communication and Resolution Program (CRP) practices to liability outcomes at medical facilities that did not implement CRP. Our reexamination of their results uncovered three serious flaws in their statistical analysis. The present article describes the Kachalia et al. (2018) study and explains the flaws. We also describe our interaction with Health Affairs. The present article is a revision of a critical commentary submitted to Health Affairs. Two reviewers at Health Affairs concurred with our assessment, but the executive editor informed us only that one or more of the authors of Kachalia et al. (2018) disagreed, without mentioning or describing any specific reasons. Health Affairs offered to publish our assessment and the authors’ rebuttal as brief Letters to the Editor, and we declined. Here, we remark on the state of editing at medical and health policy journals, themselves in need of “communication-and-resolution” rehabilitation.

Keywords: Medical liability; medical error; methodological error; peer review; adverse medical outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1263/LeCrawEtAlMar2023.pdf?mimetype=pdf (application/pdf)
https://econjwatch.org/1304 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:20:y:2023:i:1:p:1-14

Access Statistics for this article

Econ Journal Watch is currently edited by Daniel Klein

More articles in Econ Journal Watch from Econ Journal Watch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jason Briggeman ().