The Commercial Appeal wrote an interesting story on medical malpractice litigation in today’s paper. Read it here.
An excerpt:
Nationwide, the number of payments physicians made for malpractice claims fell to 11,037 last year — the lowest figure since the National Practitioner Data Bank began tracking data in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, the total $3.6 billion they paid was the second-lowest sum on record.
An article by Robert Heath in Monday’s Washington Post gives us some of the financial details of the practice of Dr. Robert Hardi, a D.C. gastroenterologist.
Dr. Hardi has about 4500 patient visits per year and performs about 1150 procedures. He works about 47 weeks per year.
Thus, Dr. Hardi has about 5650 patient contacts per year, and each of those contacts presents an opportunity for a claim to be asserted against him (because each presents the possibility of making an error or omission that could result in injury). The cost of Dr. Hardi’s malpractice insurance is $45,000 per year. The amount of his insurance coverage was not disclosed in the article. The cost of his malpractice insurance per patient contact is $7.96.
Senator Orin Hatch (R-Nevada) asked the Congressional Budget Office to update its previous findings concerning the effect that restrictions on the rights of patients to hold the health care industry responsible for errors that kill or injure patients ("tort reform").
Here are some of the findings from the report:
Let us put these numbers in perspective. Americans spend over $45 billion per year on pet care.
From the American Association for Justice’s new report, The Insurance Hoax: How Doctors and Patients Pay for the Huge Earnings of Medical Malpractice Insurers :
As Congress debates nationwide health care reform, a new analysis reveals malpractice insurers have long-played a cruel hoax on legislators and the public. By systematically distorting profits and losses, insurers created phony “financial crises,” so lawmakers would limit the legal rights of injured patients. Today, while premiums and health care costs skyrocket, malpractice insurers have average profits higher than 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
The key findings of the report, which analyzes the annual financial statements of the 10 largest U.S. medical malpractice insurers, include:
• The average profit of these insurance companies is higher than 99 percent of all Fortune 500 companies and 35 times higher than the Fortune 500 average for the same time period.
• Malpractice insurers have seen their profit margins range from 5.9 percent to 74.8 percent, with an average of 31.2 percent.
This column from the Business Section of today’s Los Angeles Times attacks the myth that restriction of the rights of patients to hold health care providers responsible for harming patients must be a part of national healthcare reform.
An excerpt:
Every circus needs a sideshow, which must be why every time the issue of rising medical costs gets debated, politicians start clamoring for "tort reform."
I recently wrote this post about the certificate of merit law struck down by the Washington Supreme Court. Here is an editorial from The Olympian which supports the Court’s decision.
Here is an excerpt:
The justices were right to keep the barrier between the legislative and judicial branches of government. They were equally correct to strike down the barrier to malpractice lawsuits.
Here is an op-ed from today’s Politico titled "Putting Trial Lawyers out of Business."
August was quite the month in the ongoing health care saga. Death panels. Scaring seniors. Angry mobs discovering new villains to blame for the terrible health care system we find ourselves having to fix today.
And then we have the tried-and-tested scapegoat for all of America’s ills and woes: trial lawyers.
President Obama announced yesterday that the government will set aside $25 million to support state grants for pilot programs to reduce medical malpractice lawsuits.
ABC News describes the grant process this way:
The Department of Health and Human Services will oversee the process for states to launch and test initiatives that meet the following parameters:
• Put patient safety first and work to reduce preventable injuries;
• Foster better communication between doctors and their patients;
• Ensure that patients are compensated in a fair and timely manner for medical injuries, while also reducing the incidence of frivolous lawsuits; and
• Reduce liability premiums.
The Washington Supreme Court has struck down the filing of a certificate of merit in medical malpractice cases in Washington state. The certificate is required by RCW 7.70.150.
The opinion said that the statute was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers between the Legislature and the Judiciary and it denied medical malpractice victims equal access to the courts.
The Court said that
The Georgia Legislature imposed a cap on noneconomic damages in meritorious medical malpractice cases in 2005. The cap is $350,000. In a case tried in Fulton County several years ago, the jury’s verdict exceeded the cap, and the Georgia Supreme Court is now considering whether the cap is constitutional.
According to a press release from the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and re-printed on the Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog
“Betty Nestlehutt was the face of her real estate business,” said Malone. “Her face was so horrifically disfigured that she was no longer able to even leave her house. Photographs of her disfigurement are even too gruesome for public distribution. The damage is permanent. Years later she has to wear layers of special makeup to try to give the appearance of normalcy.”
Day on Torts