By Alex Stein
Can a healthcare provider make an arbitration agreement with patients for resolving future malpractice disputes?
This question has no straightforward answer. As an initial matter, one needs to separate individual arbitration agreements between doctors and patients from group health plans for employees. A group health plan that obligates employees to arbitrate medical malpractice claims is valid and enforceable: see Madden v. Kaiser Foundation Hospital, 552 P.2d 1178 (Cal. 1976). The plan’s designers—employers on one side and MCOs/HMOs on the other side—have roughly equal bargaining powers and cannot easily take advantage of one another. Their preference for arbitration is part of a well thought-through deal that includes an attractively priced health benefits package for employees (such deals do not always promote the employees’ best interest, but this is a story for another occasion: see here).
With individual arbitration agreements things are markedly different. Read More