More Patient Communication, Less Malpractice Litigation

In this issue of JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, Kandinov and colleagues report on a retrospective analysis of jury verdicts and settlement reports related to rhytidectomy in the past 30 years. The study used Westlaw (Thomson Reuters), a publicly available database that contains case law and related data from more than 40 000 databases of state and federal records. The authors searched the database for all court cases involving rhytidectomies from 1985 to 2015. This search identified 89 medical malpractice claims related to rhytidectomy. State and federal court records containing jury verdicts and settlements were analyzed for further detail. The procedure performed, alleged cause of malpractice, outcome, award value, and specialty of the defendant(s) for each case were also evaluated.

http://ift.tt/2kTEIqb