Database for Pre-Screening Potentially Litigious Patients

Abstract

A database system stores information about potential patients that allows medical professionals to gauge the legal risk presented by the potential patients, giving the medical professionals the opportunity to avoid medical involvement with those individuals most prone to engaging in unwarranted legal actions. The database may also be used by insurance companies, legal services and other professional service providers to screen for potentially litigious customers. Information in the database is processed to provide a risk assessment score for each patient that is used for screening purposes.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]The present patent application is a Divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 691,263, filed Mar. 26, 2007, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 202,302, filed Jul. 24, 2002, which claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 307,561, filed Jul. 24, 2001, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The invention relates to a system and method for pre-screening potential users of professional services and products to identify those individuals that present a high risk of litigiousness.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]The need for modalities to curb the spiraling costs of professional services, which is driven in large part by expense related to legal costs and the cost of insurance protection against law suits, is widely recognized. This problem is disproportionately severe in the realm of medico-legal i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0004]A database system is described that allows medical and other professionals to gauge the legal risk presented by new patients / clients, giving them the opportunity to avoid medical involvement with those individuals most prone to engaging in unwarranted legal actions. In this way, such efficient knowledge dissemination ultimately provides the physician with means for avoiding or reducing the risks of liability litigation through patient motivated medical malpractice suits before the fact by enabling him / her to make much more intelligently informed decisions regarding such questions as acceptance of that patient or conversely, denial of the associated needed medical services to that given patient (or acceptance for particular types of medical services or treatments) as well as to what degree is special medical attention and / or personalized care directed to the emotional needs of the patient most significantly warranted in order to minimize the ultimate risk of litigation against the physician eventually resulting from that patient. Information within this system will allow improved physician-patient matching. Other applications of the present system pertain to hospitals, insurance companies, legal services and other professional service providers. For example, using the information by the disclosed system will enable insurance carriers to more appropriately prorate individual premiums based upon more accurate evaluation of risk profile.

Problems solved by technology

This problem is disproportionately severe in the realm of medico-legal issues and is a major problem for virtually all providers of professional services and in the service industry, in general.

Legal defense and extremely high settlements have created insurmountable debts.

Similar high cost of client-initiated law suits are impacting virtually all professions.

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