National solution is needed to stop 'litigation lottery'

By Guest columnist Bill Frist is a Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee and a heart and lung transplant surgeon.

The only level-one trauma center in Las Vegas shuts its doors. Twelve orthopedic surgeons at facilities near Philadelphia, Pa., resign their practice. Two-thirds of doctors in a small Mississippi city consider leaving for Louisiana.

What is forcing our medical community to take such drastic measures? The "litigation lottery" - trial lawyers filing too many lawsuits with the hope of winning excessive awards.

Medical malpractice litigation, which occurs when an injured patient sues a doctor over a medical error, has exploded in the United States. Between 1995 and 2000, the average amount a jury awarded a patient rose by more than 70 percent, to $3.5 million per claim.

More than half of all malpractice awards now exceed $1 million. Trial lawyers, who are fueling this surge by hand-picking patients they believe will win large awards, typically take 30 to 40 percent of the proceeds.

Doctors buy insurance to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits. But excessive awards have pushed the cost of insurance to unaffordable levels. Last year, premiums rose by 30 percent or more in some states.

And for doctors who perform high-risk procedures or practice where trial lawyers have won excessive awards, premiums have risen by as much as 300 percent a year. Many doctors can no longer afford to do the jobs they love.

But even more disturbing to doctors, because we swear a sacred and ancient oath to do no harm, is the impact of excessive awards on patient care. High insurance premiums are forcing doctors to move their practices to other states, adjust how they practice medicine, or quit practicing medicine altogether. Trial lawyers may be winning the litigation lottery, but patients are suffering a health care crisis.

Excessive malpractice awards impede access to health care. When a trauma center closes, specialists resign from a hospital or rural doctors can't deliver babies, patients must travel longer distances to get the care they need.

They must also select from a smaller pool of physicians. When minutes, and a doctor's experience, can mean the difference between life and death, access to medical care matters.

Excessive malpractice awards also increase the cost of health care. Many doctors are forced to practice "defensive medicine." They must order more tests, write more prescriptions and refer more patients to specialists to protect themselves against lawsuits.

A recent federal report found evidence that reasonable limits on malpractice awards would reduce health care costs by as much as 5 to 9 percent per year.

Excessive malpractice awards are the single largest barrier to improving patient safety in our country. Doctors and hospitals want desperately to improve safety by sharing, analyzing and learning from medical errors. I've proposed a bill that would let them do that without the fear of being sued for trying to improve patient care.

But even the most limited restrictions on lawsuits are unacceptable to some of my Democrat colleagues. They argue trial lawyers should have open access to any medical error reporting system. That would render such a system useless, because few doctors or hospitals would participate.

We can turn back this growing health care crisis by reforming medical malpractice litigation. Some states have already taken the responsible step of capping awards for non-economic damages, which are highly subjective, intangible and the major source of mischief for trial lawyers. Rightfully, these states have also preserved awards for economic damages, such as lost wages and medical costs.

But most states have done nothing, or not enough, to fix the problem. The American Medical Association lists 12 states that are in a health care crisis because of excessive malpractice awards.

And 30 more states are nearing crisis, including Tennessee. This national problem will worsen without a national solution.

Just before the August recess, the Senate debated medical malpractice litigation reform that would have capped trial lawyers' fees. Although I support bolder action that includes limiting awards for non-economic damages, this bill would have been a good first step. It would have allowed injured patients to keep a greater share of their rightful compensation, while reducing the incentive for trial lawyers to pursue excessive awards.

Unfortunately, all of my Democrat colleagues voted against this patient-friendly bill, keeping the litigation lottery alive and well.

Injured patients have the right to sue for medical malpractice, but trial lawyers do not have the right to force innocent doctors from their livelihoods and throw our health care system into crisis. With millions of uninsured families, increasing health care costs, too many deaths from medical errors, and no prescription drug benefit for seniors, the Senate must show its commitment to turning back the growing health care crisis in our country.

Limiting excessive malpractice awards is one solution that public servants, medical providers, and, most important, patients can and should support.

I assume the Dem plan is to continue enriching the trial lawyers and bleeding the health care providers until the entire system is unworkable.
The resulting "crisis" will have the sheeple demanding quick action, and the 'rats have it: National Health Care!

What will the ambulance chasers do then? Become Healthcare beaurocrats?

What's the difference beween a lawyer and the smallest human cell, a semen cell? Answer: the semen cell has at least a million-to-one chance of becoming a human being.

The only problem with stopping "excessive" malpractice awards is the AMA takes NO responsibility to get rid of bad doctors. Doctors that have killed and maimed people are protected by a wall of silence that makes the Blue wall of silence ashamed. I had the unfortunate luck of running into one of those doctors. A general surgeon that misdiagnosed cancer, cut nerves, left objects in patients (my case), cut wrong side and I forgot the nine other incidents against him. During this whole ordeal, he never recieved a bad rating, or was denied hospital privilages. He was fired from three different offices in three different states. So if suing is not an option, what is?

The problem is not that medical associations will try to protect their members - their self-interest is obvious - but that medical associations' ideas on who should practice in the health-care field is enforced by state law. If we eliminated state medical boards and moved all personnel certification into the private sector, allowing multiple licensors to compete, no cover-ups could persist.

There are no easy answers for this. We probably need a civilian review board much like many big city PD's have. Simply to continue to allow them to police themselves hasn't worked nor will it work in the future. A civilian review board would be a step in the right direction to getting rid of bad doctors, judges and lawyers along with bad cops.

You think getting rid of bad doctors is hard, try going after a lawyer that should not be in practice. In Mississippi it is impossible to hold a lawyer responsible for total incompetence. The sharks refuse to cannibalize themselves.

guess who comes to the aid of the incompetent MDs when you try to get them out??? lawyers, of course. it takes years to get a truly bad physician disciplined or shut down. you're right in this respect: strong safeguards have to be in place to retrain the docs who need it and drum out those who don't measure up.

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