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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.
Scare tactics
Meanwhile, doctors still receive steady reminders from insurers and others cautioning them about the continuing risk of lawsuits.
"Good doctors get sued," attorney Mark Morgan -- who's also a doctor -- tells a crowd of doctors attending at a January 2006 asset protection seminar in Orlando. Morgan is a partner at Morgan, Padgett Law Group in Tampa, which provides legal services to Physicians Advantage, a Jacksonville-based company that sells a range of financial and legal advice to physicians to insulate them from litigation. Endorsed by the FMA, Physicians Advantage has more than 300 doctor clients. "The fact that you practice good medicine is not enough to stop you from being sued," he tells the doctors. "All specialties are really subject to significant malpractice judgments -- what I call extinction-level events. I define those as being $1 million or more."
An OB/GYN in Atlanta pays on average $69,550 for $1 million in liability coverage. In Hillsborough County, the average is $141,271 for the same coverage. In Miami-Dade County, the premium runs $275,478.
Med-mal insurers also encourage a range of risk-management strategies by their physician customers. With FPIC's blessing, Tampa Bay Women's Care, a 67-physician OB/GYN practice, requires its patients to sign an arbitration agreement waiving their right to a jury trial if a dispute over their medical care ever arises.
Patients are shown a seven-minute DVD clip that echoes the mantra repeated in support of tort reform -- that med-mal insurance rates are forcing some doctors to leave the state, others to leave the medical profession and some to practice with no insurance at all. The waiver is necessary, according to the DVD, so the practice can keep providing care.
Interestingly, however, requiring the waiver isn't bringing the practice any reduction in its insurance rates from FPIC, its insurer. FPIC President Bob White says the program may save physicians the stress of a trial and could produce savings down the road if the effort leads to a decrease in the number of lawsuits filed each year.
By the Numbers and closed Source: Florida Office of Insurance Regulation |
