Stakeholders The insurance defense lawyers association as well as plaintiff bar associations have a great deal to lose through medical malpractice tort reform. Likewise, medical malpractice insurance companies also have an interest in the legislation as do the professional organizations representing healthcare providers and hospitals. The general public has a stake in the issue at hand since their insurance rates are affected by medical malpractice claims, settlements, and verdicts; and, moreover, the quality of their medical care is also adversely affected due the current state of the medical malpractice system (Leape, 2001).

4. Issue Statement

Should the federal government hold heath care institutions and healthcare workers accountable for hospital acquired conditions though they may not be directly responsible?

B. Policy Goals and Options

5. Policy Objectives

The underlying policy here seeks to hold health care providers liable for negligence due to a health acquired condition so as to ensure the safety of the public and improve the overall quality of care delivered to the public.

6. Policy Options and Alternatives

If this policy were enacted, then the individuals whom are most knowledgeable about how the medical setting should function will have a legal duty and an economic incentive to raise a red flag...

By providing this incentive, then injured plaintiffs and intermittent government regulatory agency review boards would not be the only ones who are essentially keeping the healthcare system in check. Accordingly, perhaps some of the issues that could have been corrected before malpractice occurred could be remedied without an innocent patient being harmed as a result (Leape, 2001).
C. Evaluation of Policy Options and Alternatives

7. Evaluation Criteria

Individual healthcare providers object to this proposal as it puts an increasing burden on an already overworked and burdened group of professionals. Furthermore, they argue that it would not be fair to hold them directly responsible in a mandatory sense for something that they did not directly do. However, as a society, routinely hold hospitals negligent for the negligence of its doctors even though the facility itself did not directly do anything directly wrong. This is because of the policy that facilities have a duty to ensure that their employees are delivering satisfactory medical care to its clients (U.S. Institute of Health). The same argument may be made in creating this duty from the bottom up.

8. Analysis of Policy Alternatives

The alternative here is to