Although Texas tort reform caps caused a significant initial decrease in medical liability claims per quarter, Louisiana quality improvement measures demonstrated similarly decreased liability claims without increased financial burden, reports a study in the May-June 2015 American Journal of Medical Quality. The researchers set out to "determine the effectiveness of Texas tort reform measures on decreasing medical liability claims, to analyze the effects of quality of medical liability claims, and to assess the potential financial impact of quality improvements." They examined claims from a large multihospital organization that operated in both Louisiana and Texas, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality measures, and net operating margins for both states (to estimate potential financial impact). Upon review of quality measure implementation in both states and implementation of tort reform in Texas, researchers posit that Texas would have experienced a similar decrease in liability claim rate without tort reform, based on the downward trend of liability claims in Louisiana. "Although this prediction model only numerically estimates the potential impact of the apparent critical mean CMS performance score on medical liability claims in Texas, it is reasonable to assume, based on Louisiana quality data, that quality improvements would have resulted in decreased claims in Texas as well, without implementation of tort reform," conclude the researchers. They note that their findings of improved quality correlated with fewer claims should support the goal of improving patient care as a quality and risk improvement initiative.

HRC Recommends: Patient safety and care quality should be primary goals of any healthcare organization. However, studies in the literature demonstrating a correlation between decreased claims and increased quality of care are few and far between for a variety of reasons. Therefore, risk managers and quality improvement professionals may want to review the study to determine whether they can similarly mine their organizations' data to correlate quality measures and claims data within their organizations.