Instead we rely on protocols and our protocols do provide reasonably good guidelines for when we should order certain diagnostic tests on a patient. Most practicing physicians have been faced, at some point, with a patient whose disease defied the protocols. Whenever this happens, the doctor will feel blindsided and a lot less certain when dealing with future patients. No doctor wants to miss an important diagnosis and this is true even if there were no malpractice attorneys. Everyone is used to hearing that excuse, so it works.
If defensive medicine really were exclusively about the fear of malpractice then it should be easy to show that, in the states with higher malpractice costs, far more medical tests and procedures are done. The question is, why have they dropped by so much? An obvious answer might be that so many states have enacted tort reform laws aimed specifically at reducing the cost of medical malpractice.
By , 33 states in the U. How much of an impact have these laws really had? Before trying to answer this, I should explain that not all tort reform laws are the same.
In fact, each of the 33 different laws for each state that has such a law is unique in its own way. Some states have very robust tort reform laws that place rather low caps on the damages that can be awarded to a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case whereas other laws have either very high caps or only cap damages in very specific cases like wrongful death. Though the differences in each state law makes it difficult to evaluate the overall impact of tort reform as a whole, there are enough similarities in many of the laws to make general comparisons.
Before addressing how the different tort reform laws might have impacted medical malpractice costs, I need to explain how damages are awarded to plaintiffs whenever they win a medical malpractice case against a healthcare provider. The total damages a plaintiff might be awarded can usually be split into two broad categories: economic damages and non-economic damages.
The normal components of economic damages are lost wages, due to the persons temporary or permanent inability to work, and ongoing medical costs, if expensive medical treatment has been prolonged due to medical negligence. Most damage caps are aimed at limiting non-economic damages since those costs are rather subjective. With nearly 37 million hospitalizations in the US every year, there are about 1 million malpractice incidents.
One explanation for this very low rate is that patients lack the medical knowledge to recognize when malpractice has occurred. Another is that they lack any incentive to file actual lawsuits, due to high lawyer fees and slow court procedures Feldstein, Because such a small proportion of patients receive malpractice payouts each year, it seems that claims payments alone do not explain recent crises in the medical malpractice insurance market. These crises are, in fact, mostly attributable to the structure of that market, combined with changes in general financial conditions.
A doctor in New York can expect to pay at least five times more than the same doctor in California, Ohio, or Tennessee would pay for the same level of coverage. Different policies have different caps and limit levels as to how much they will pay out. Other policies may offer you the option to have a higher claim limit with the ability to make fewer claims per year. Your claims history can affect your liability limits. If your malpractice risks are low, you may be able to opt for a liability policy with a bit less coverage.
Since there are so many factors involved in determining your insurance rates, we cannot say precisely what it will cost you. But we can provide you with some statistics and averages to give you a better sense of where your rates may fall. Malpractice insurance costs work out to about 3. And while malpractice insurance can be a hefty monthly bill for surgeons, obstetricians tend to pay the highest rates of all.
The other main factor is that they practice in New York, the most expensive state in the nation for malpractice coverage. For the past ten years or so, malpractice insurance premiums have either decreased or remained flat.
These laws started being put into place in various states in the early s. Since then, physicians have seen much more stable rates that do not increase year after year. With tort reform laws, states put a cap on the amount of money that judges can order physicians to pay in a malpractice suit.
And with this reform, the cost of malpractice insurance has decreased a bit. The tort laws vary from state to state, but they serve as a way of limiting how much a jury awards a patient if they win their suit. They can also sue for non-economic losses, more commonly referred to as pain and suffering.
As with any policy, your rates are always subject to change. Tort reform laws do not prevent or hinder patients from filing malpractice suits. But they do help eliminate some lawsuits where patients sue for an exorbitant amount of money or seek damages far in excess of their injury or loss.
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