Malpractice caps bring flood of docs to Texas
NY Times:
In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months.
That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice.
Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.
The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.
“It was hard to believe at first; we thought it was a spike,” said Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the medical board and a neurosurgeon and lawyer. But Dr. Patrick said the trend — licenses up 18 percent since 2003, when the damage caps were enacted — has held, with an even sharper jump of 30 percent in the last fiscal year, compared with the year before.
“Doctors are coming to Texas because they sense a friendlier malpractice climate,” he said.
Some experts say the picture may be more complicated and less positive. They question how big a role the cap on malpractice awards has played, arguing that awards in malpractice lawsuits showed little increase in the 12 years before the law changed.
And some critics, including liability lawyers, question whether the changes have left patients more vulnerable. With doctors facing reduced malpractice exposure, they say, many have cut back on their insurance, making it harder for plaintiffs to collect damages. Moreover, the critics say that some rural areas have fewer doctors than before.
The measure changing Texas’ malpractice landscape, Proposition 12, was narrowly approved in a constitutional referendum on Sept. 12, 2003. It barred the courts from interfering in limits set by the Legislature on medical malpractice recoveries.
For pain and suffering, so-called noneconomic damage, patients can sue a doctor and, in unusual cases, up to two health care institutions for no more than $250,000 each, under limits adopted by the Legislature. Plaintiffs can still recover economic losses, like the cost of continuing medical care or lost income, but the amount they can win was capped at $1.6 million in death cases.
All but 15 states have adopted some limits on medical damage awards, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the restrictions in Texas go further than in many states, where the limits are often twice as high as they are here.
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Some experts say that the lack of a state income tax, combined with what William M. Sage, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, called a “relatively rapid transition in its tort reputation as a plaintiff-friendly state,” has contributed to the state’s appeal to doctors.
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Adding to the state’s allure for doctors, Mr. Opelt said, was an average 21.3 percent drop in malpractice insurance premiums, not counting rebates for renewal.
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Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore should take note they are not going to Canada, Cuba or the UK.
I can see my main doctor on one days notice and quicker if its something serious. I can usually get an appointment with a specialist within a week. For a Canadian that would be a dream that rationed health care would never let come true.
POSTED BY MERV
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