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Legal theory holds that personal-injury litigation serves a social purpose, improving overall medical care by punishing substandard practice. However, a correlation between bad care and litigation risk has been difficult to establish, either for individual practitioners or for institutions.
Researchers tallied tort claims filed against 1465 nursing homes belonging to five large U.S. chains during 1998–2006. Overall, weak but significant inverse correlations were found between risk for being sued and 5 of 10 commonly accepted measures of quality care, including compliance with federal standards, staffing ratios, and clinical indicators such as rates of pressure ulcers and falls. These correlations persisted in low-litigation environments but …