March 16, 2007

Medical Liability Crisis Continues to Put Providers, Patients at Risk

The crisis of runaway liability lawsuits against health care providers continues across the nation. And patients and providers suffer the consequences.

• Fully one-third of the states remain in crisis, according to the American Medical Association, because of excessive malpractice liability lawsuits.
   
• A recent news article from Connecticut highlighted the squeeze this threat has put doctors and other providers in.

Because plaintiffs’ lawyers target health care providers, the threat of a lawsuit — even one without merit — translates into high insurance premiums.  Those extra costs lead to additional hardships for patients and consumers.

• Trial lawyers have taken a “sue first and ask questions later” strategy. Merely filing suit, even if there’s no great harm or negligence, forces providers to have to lawyer up.  That costs big bucks.
   
• The situation of predatory lawsuits in health care has become so dire that 17 states are in crisis.  Lawsuit abuse has driven up liability insurance premiums. Higher premiums squeeze doctors and other providers.
   
• The result:  Some doctors take early retirement, stop doing riskier procedures or relocate their practices to another state. Hospitals and clinics stop offering certain high-risk services.

The Hartford Courant in Connecticut recently shed light on the real stresses on providers in that crisis state.

• Almost nine out of ten doctors’ offices in Connecticut have no more than four physicians, and fewer than ten people on staff.  “They are small businesses with the same concerns about overhead, benefits and the bottom line as every other small business.”
   
• Lawsuits have steadily forced up doctors’ insurance rates. For instance, one family practitioner earns $75,000 a year.  He pays $15,000 for malpractice insurance. This is “fairly typical for a primary care physician in Connecticut.”
   
• Another example: An obstetrician, the local hospital’s 2005 Physician of the Year, quit obstetrics and major surgery, while going to part-time practice.  This lowered his yearly liability insurance premiums from $120,000 to $25,000.
   
• The Connecticut State Medical Society has seen a lot of doctors retire and leave their practices.  Over 30 percent of these retiring physicians cited financial and administrative pressures as the reasons for early retirement.

Medical liability lawsuits have proliferated and harmed the well-being of providers, patients and society. Plaintiffs’ lawyers must be reined in.   There continues to be a compelling need for reforms that will help keep providers in medical practice, keep hospital ward doors open, keep treatments and procedures and access to care available to the patients who desperately need them.