Medical Malpractice System in the United States of America: Lesson to Learn for Indonesia

Abstract

A system that serves the liability and settlement of medical malpractice disputes or commonly referred to as medical malpractice system has been established in many countries to respond the rise of medical malpractice claims against doctors. Medical malpractice system in the United States of America (the USA) has been relatively well developed as compared to other countries. Beside adopting pretrial screening process in medical malpractice litigation, various methods of alternative to litigation have been developed in the USA. This paper aims to explore the development of the medical malpractice system in the USA and to see the possibility for Indonesia to learn. This normative legal research relies on the secondary data especially which were collected from online sources. It is found that there are some initiatives in the USA that can be adopted by Indonesia for improving its medical malpractice system, especially the establishment of pretrial screening panel. It is expected that pretrial screening process can eliminate meritless claims which later may reduce unnecessary legal actions against doctors.

Keywords

• medical malpractice
• medical malpractice system
• the usa
• indonesia