Interventions in chronic renal failure.

doctors may have had more claims because they took on more difficult cases.Debate will continue on whether a small group of incompetent doctors produce much of the malpractice problem, but the Office of Technology Assessment has suggested that malpractice information should be collected and used for quality screening by hospitals, licensing boards, and others (perhaps even patients).6Indeed, a national database of doctors who have lost malpractice suits went into operation on 1 September (22 September, p 569): hospitals are required to check the database before hiring doctors, but the data are not yet available to patients.The Florida researchers argue that this would be premature, but research in the epidemiology of malpractice must continue so that we have data on which to base such proposals.