The American Medical Association and 100 medical and physician organizations say the bi-partisan HEALTH Act, submitted to Congress earlier this week, could be exactly what the doctor ordered for solving medical liability issues.
The organizations have sent a letter to the sponsors of a new tort reform bill – H.R.5, the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2011 – giving their support to the legislation and its reforms of what they called "the nation's broken medical liability system." Similar bills have been submitted in the past, but lacked support in the Senate.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, MD, (R-Ga.) introduced the bill in the House; Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and David Scott (D-Ga.) are co-sponsors.
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"Our current medical liability system fails both patients and physicians," said AMA Chairman Ardis Dee Hoven, MD. "High jury awards and the cost of defending against lawsuits – even frivolous ones – results in high medical liability premiums, with devastating results for patients."
"The proven reforms contained in the HEALTH Act would help reduce costs while ensuring that patients who have been injured due to negligence receive just compensation," the letter states. "This bill provides the right balance of reforms by promoting speedier resolutions to disputes, maintaining access to courts, maximizing patient recovery of damage awards with unlimited compensation for economic damages, while limiting non-economic damages to a quarter million dollars."
"The HEALTH Act would put in place proven reforms similar to those already working in states like California and Texas," Hoven said. "These reforms keep physicians' liability premiums stable and ensure that patients – not lawyers – receive more of the awards."
While the total medical liability premiums in the rest of the country rose 945 percent between 1976 and 2009, the increase in premiums in California – where reforms were in place – was less than one third of that amount, at 261 percent, Hoven noted.
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"Every dollar that is spent on medical liability costs is a dollar that could go to patient care," she said.
An average of 95 medical liability claims are filed for every 100 physicians, according to a recent AMA report. Hoven noted that a majority of claims filed against physicians lack merit, as 64 percent of liability claims that closed in 2009 were dropped or dismissed.
These claims still come at a significant cost, Hoven said, as physicians and healthcare providers may take extra precautionary measures to avoid being sued, a practice known as defensive medicine. A 2003 Department of Health and Human Services report estimated the cost of defensive medicine to be between $70 billion and $126 billion per year.