Editor's Page

How Do You Manage Your Malpractice Risk?

Robert L. Edsall

If your malpractice insurance premiums are threatening to bankrupt you, taking steps to reduce your malpractice risk may seem almost pointless. But if you ask yourself what could be worse than high malpractice premiums, one answer presents itself in short order: being sued or, even worse, losing a malpractice suit.

Taking steps to reduce your malpractice risk remains as important now as it ever has been, and the article in this issue by Richard G. Roberts, MD, JD, is a useful review. Roberts, writing as a family physician and an attorney and writing out of experience at the national level as a former AAFP president and board chair, is particularly well prepared to offer advice on malpractice risk reduction.

That said, Roberts couldn't be exhaustive in the space of one article, and I suspect that, as you read it, you'll think of malpractice risk-reduction tips he didn't mention - ones you practice by and perhaps ones that have kept a patient from harm, helped you maintain good patient relations or kept you from making a big mistake.

If you have any tips you would like to pass along, here's a good place to do it. We'll review tips that are submitted and publish selected ones in future issues. That way, a thought, a technique, an approach that has served you well can also serve other family physicians and their patients. Just fill in the form below and fax it to me or put your thoughts in an e-mail to me at fpmedit@aafp.org.

Robert Edsall is editor-in-chief of Family Practice Management. Conflicts of interest: none reported.