ABSTRACT
Overview There has been discussion of revamping the current medical malpractice infrastructure. However, one component that should be in the limelight is health information technology (HIT) because it will soon be having effects on quality of care, insurance premiums, and potential reduction in lawsuits for the physician. For this reason, it is important to understand what is holding back physicians from using health information technology to possibly reduce their chances of medical malpractice, and then analyzing the actual effects of HIT on medical malpractice lawsuits, claims, and mediation amounts. For this reason, this chapter does two analyses. First, it analyzes perceptions of physicians and interest in reducing medical malpractice, and, second, it derives a theoretical model of what major factors can be modeled to see effects on the medical malpractice system in the new technological age.
