Six Hospitals Announce Interest in Pilot Projects for Special Health Courts

Common Good, the bipartisan legal reform coalition, announced today that six prominent hospitals have expressed “strong interest” in serving as pilot projects for special health courts.

The idea of special health courts, being championed by Common Good, has generated bipartisan support as a way of restoring reliability to medical justice. Both U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and the Progressive Policy Institute, known in the 1990s as President Clinton’s “idea mill,” have endorsed the concept. So have more than 80 leaders in American health care, including patient safety experts and deans of medical schools or schools of public health.

In the U.S. Senate, Michael Enzi (R-WY) and Max Baucus (D-MT) have introduced a bill to authorize and fund pilot health courts. The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held hearings on the subject yesterday.