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Medical Malpractice
Fear Factor: Medical Malpractice
Legal reforms have brightened the medical malpractice horizon, but physicians are still wary of lawsuits -- and still angry at high insurance premiums. More than 2,000 now choose to go without insurance.
However the waivers pan out, doctors haven't found much of a way around two other reform measures passed by voters in 2004. Amendment 7, the so-called "Patients Right To Know About Adverse Medical Incidents Act," requires full access to all healthcare provider records related to adverse medical events. Amendment 8, also known as the "three strikes" amendment, requires the Board of Medicine to revoke the license of a physician found guilty of at least three instances of medical malpractice.
Doctors say both measures have only increased their fears of legal exposure. Physicians complain that Amendment 7 discourages valuable exchanges of information, thereby limiting the effectiveness of peer review, while Amendment 8 simply encourages premature settlements in order to avoid a judgment that could put a physician's license at risk.
Where's the price break?
 PATIENCE: Bob White, president of insurer FPIC, says having patients sign waivers could produce savings for doctors down the road. Right now, he says, it would be unwise to rush price cuts that can't be sustained. [Photo: Kelly LaDuke] |
Steve Burgess, until recently the state's insurance consumer advocate, is among those who think that the post-reform trends should have pushed premiums lower than they are. In January, at Burgess' request, Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty held a hearing to ask major medical-malpractice companies that do business in the state why they haven't cut rates further. The insurance companies, Burgess says, "stated in their bill ... the whole purpose was to get savings to the medical community and the patients. We've got 40% decreases in their costs, and we're seeing much more modest decreases being passed on to the doctors."
FPIC's White says everyone needs to be patient and not rush price cuts that can't be sustained. White says it takes so long to resolve a typical medical-malpractice case that it will take several more years to see what real effect tort reforms have produced. "About 70% of the cases closed in 2005 were already reported to us
before tort reform became enacted, and an even higher percentage, 85%, occurred before tort reform became effective."
Handing out even larger rate reductions would be downright "dangerous," White says, since the courts haven't gotten ahold of them yet. "That's the problem we have when people start talking about giving prospective credit for reforms. We know it will be years before we know those reforms are constitutional."
