Medical courts could ease US malpractice crisis, group says

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the charity Common Good, which is based in Washington, DC, and campaigns for legal reform, have been awarded grants totalling almost $1.5m (£0.8m; €1.2m) by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to design a medical court system that would replace jurors with expert panellists.

The move stems from the malpractice litigation crisis in the United States, which has led to controversy as some doctors have closed their practices, leaving areas of the country without obstetricians, orthopaedists, or neurosurgeons. It has also led a coalition of medical and health policy experts and the US Senate majority leader, Dr Bill Frist, to propose the creation of medical courts. …