The art of apportionment: working out responsibility for health care misadventures.

ABSTRACT

When something goes wrong in the provision of health care, it is often unclear who might be at fault, and whether they actually are at fault. A necessity and strength of modern health care is the variety of professionals who participate in it, who differ in their respective roles and expertise. Trying to work out who did what can be difficult, and whether they did something wrong often more so. So when one arrives at the task of working out whether one party is more to blame than the other, it is rarely a straightforward exercise. Arriving at a percentage figure to identify a party's blameworthiness might seem superficially simple, but it often requires the balancing of a bewildering array of various factors, over which different minds are commonly at odds.