Article: Relationship between Quality of Care and Negligence Litigation in Nursing Homes

Michelle Mello, J.D., Ph.D., PHLR Methods Core member, and colleagues recently published "Relationship between Quality of Care and Negligence Litigation in Nursing Homes" in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors analyzed information on tort claims brought against 1465 nursing homes between 1998 and 2006 to 10 indicators of nursing home quality drawn from two U.S. national data sets: the Online Survey, Certification, and Reporting system and the Minimum Data Set Quality Measure/Indicator Report. They found that the best-performing nursing homes are sued only marginally less than the worst-performing ones.