Marlynn Wei, a psychiatrist and attorney in New York City. Other states such as Colorado and Idaho shield physicians against admissions of fault being used against them in court. Wei, who authored an article on the use and effectiveness of state apology laws J.
Health Law ; Whether apology laws actually reduce litigation is unclear, Dr. Wei said. States that have adopted this approach to an apology statute are: California, Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Tennessee, Washington. See M. Thirty-eight states have adopted an apology law, leaving 12 states that allow the admission of benevolent and sympathetic statements into evidence. These states have taken a variety of approaches to the treatment of benevolent statements—from overturning previously enacted apology laws to having no notable intent to enact an apology law at all.
An apology by a health care provider in one of these 12 states will be admissible as evidence. However, the concept of an apology law is one of the few exceptions. As attorneys, we often seek to reduce the risk of litigation by limiting what our clients say or do. Yet, studies show that plaintiffs sue doctors to understand what happened, protect the safety of future patients, and an overall desire to hold caregivers accountable.
Monetary compensation is often secondary to these underlying motives. The range of apology laws that have been enacted by the states attempt to allow transparency between a health care provider and his patient—ultimately attempting to reduce medical malpractice claims. However, not all lawsuits are preventable. We also must advise our clients that few, if any, jurisdictions will exclude overt admissions of fault. The line where the inadmissible apology ends and the statement of fault begins is not often black and white.
Expanding beyond this simple apology is where the line blurs and a health care provider might regret saying sorry. The first apology law was enacted in Massachusetts in Covid February 16, Unfortunately, some of the behaviors they are suggesting are outside the domain of what is protected by the statute and, for that reason, may put physicians in jeopardy.
To minimize the risk that this might happen, this article reviews the intricacies of the various medical apology laws. The greatest challenge to understanding these laws is overcoming the ambiguity in the language used to compose them.
Recognizing and applying this unconventional terminology is essential to proper interpretation of the statutes. The Pennsylvania statute, like most apology laws, covers only apologies that do not contain an admission of fault.
The bottom line: although sympathy laws supposedly provide medical and legal benefits, it is doubtful that they have any effect at all. Unfortunately, there are no published studies suggesting that physicians are withholding sympathy for this reason, and I have never heard a physician express such a concern.
So, because the Pennsylvania law is based on an unsubstantiated premise that is probably incorrect, the protection it provides is unlikely to have any medical or legal effect. The fundamental flaw of medical sympathy laws is that they provide a type of protection that is in fact unnecessary. Plaintiff attorneys are not interested in demonstrating that physicians are kind, caring, and compassionate.
On the contrary, their goal is to portray the defendant physician as uncaring and insensitive, so as to win the favor of the jury. By preventing attorneys from doing something that they would not do, sympathy laws serve no practical purpose. Medical malpractice: why is it so hard for doctors to apologize? February 6, Apology laws and malpractice liability: what have we learned? July 8, Effects of a communication-and-resolution program on hospitals' malpractice claims and costs.
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