Some have suggested this to be a mechanism to control health care costs. I actually think this is a good idea, and would provide global standards to reduce practice variation.
As I stated in my defensive medicine piece, the presence of evidence-based global standards of care would also help in reducing defensive medicine:
A simpler way would be to have clinical, evidence-based, guidelines globally applied to malpractice cases. That way, standard of care would be more consistent, and not vary from jury to jury. It will lessen the impact of “hired gun” experts, who can support whatever standard of care is convenient to the lawyers. Doctors can then focus on practicing evidence-based medicine, confident that the standards they are held to in the community, will be the same in the legal world.
