It looks like a few rule changes have dramatically lowered the number of malpractice suits filed in Pennsylvania. There were 1,602 filings last year, a 41% decline from the annual average between 2000 and 2002, before the changes were put in place.

One of the new rules requires a “certificate of merit” from a medical professional, establishing that “the medical procedures in a case fell below applicable standards of care,” according to a recent statement from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. Another rule requires cases to be filed in the county where the alleged malpractice took place — an effort to discourage so-called venue shopping, where cases would be filed in counties thought to be sympathetic to plaintiffs.

The number of malpractice cases fell sharply in 2003, when the rules were in place, and have stayed down.

“The results have been extraordinarily impressive in abating the malpractice insurance crisis,” Pennsylvania’s governor said yesterday, the Philly Inquirer reports.

The president of the state’s medical society told the paper the decline in cases is encouraging, but said malpractice insurance rates in the state are among the costliest in the country. A spokesman for the society told the Health Blog that, for the most part, state doctors’ malpractice premiums have been stable or decreased slightly since 2002.

A representative of the state’s trial lawyers group told the Inquirer the group was satisfied with the rules, partly because there are no longer calls for caps on awards in the state.

see original

In 2004 Nevada passed a law that capped punitive damages to $350,000 in medical malpractice cases. The bill was part of the “Keep our Doctors in Nevada Act” in which supporters claimed limits on recovery were necessary in order to keep doctors in high specialties in the state.

Now, due to a hepatitis outbreak, as a result of unsanitary vaccination practices, Nevada has re-evaluated its stance on tort reform and is initiated the passing of AB495, which would eliminate the cap on non-economic damages.

The hepatitis outbreak resulted in 50,000 patients being notified that they were put at risk for contracting the disease. The AP reports that this is the largest patient notification in U.S. history.

Opponents of AB495 reiterate that the lifting the limit on non-economic damages will place doctors in the same precarious situation to either relocate their practices or face high insurance premiums.

Supporters of the bill contend that $350,000 does not adequately compensate victims of medical malpractice. For example, Cathy Bussewitz of the Associated Press noted:

Megan Gasper, 33, a mother of two children, told legislators she contracted hepatitis C after having two colonoscopies performed at the two clinics where the outbreak occurred, the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada and the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center.

“This has pretty much stolen a year of my life,” Gasper said, fighting tears. “When you have to get up out of bed every day, and know that you have to take a medicine that will seriously affect your ability to play with your children, it’s hard to give yourself a self-injection.”

Former patients and family members told frightening stories of substandard care. Kevin Murray lost his daughter when doctors failed to notice the signs of meningitis. Michael Washington, who was the first patient to test positive for hepatitis C after the outbreak, said he would never be normal again.
(more…)

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently launched a new online learning center to provide physicians with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions about electronic prescribing (ePrescribing). The learning center can be found at www.ama-assn.org/go/eprescribing.

“The AMA’s new ePrescribing learning center takes the guess work out of the decision-making process by giving physicians all the tools they need to decide what system is best for their practice,” said Joseph M. Heyman, MD, AMA board chairman. “At the end of last year, about 13 percent of physicians were prescribing electronically, but with the incentives available through Medicare’s ePrescribing incentive program and this new AMA resource, I’m certain that percentage will increase.”

The new online learning center includes:
• Complete information on ePrescribing vendors and features;
• Calculators to estimate time savings and determine Medicare ePrescribing incentive payments;
• The latest information on federal and state programs offering ePrescribing incentives;
• Readiness and planning tools to map out an implementation plan.
(more…)

On June 23-24, at the Union League of Philadelphia, the American Conference Institute (ACI) will be hosting a Conference on Preventing, Managing and Defending Claims of Obstetric Malpractice.

Arguably the most expensive medical malpractice cases to deal with given the economic consequences of compensating for a lifetime of medical care and economic loss as well as pain and suffering, perinatal brain injury cases carry a disproportionate share of total defense costs, indemnity payments and damages in physician liability lawsuits. Thus, it is key for professionals involved in obstetric care to have up-to-the-minute medico-legal information on obstetric malpractice lawsuits.

The Conference on Preventing, Managing and Defending Claims of Obstetric Malpractice will feature a panel of legal and medical experts from: Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Johns Hopkins Hospital; Albert Einstein Healthcare Network; AIG Domestic Claims; Albany Medical College; Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy & Bach; as well as Gair, Gair, Conason, Steigman & Mackauf.

The panels will discuss the medical and legal issues surrounding complex claims that include:
• The appropriate standard of care in urgent situations, such as shoulder dystocia, C-section and other obstetric emergencies;
• Assessing new medical standards and techniques, such as cool cap therapy, new NIH fetal monitoring standards and more;
• Predicting and identifying signs of fetal asphyxia during labor;
• Fetal monitoring and surveillance, making the right decisions based on the right information;
• Neonatal infection, metabolic disorders and timing of subsequent injury; assessing causation and the standard of care;
• Understanding the role and responsibility of the various providers along the chain of command;
• Determining the timing of an injury to determine if professional negligence really was the cause of it;
• Evaluating damages by assessing life care plans, structured settlements and more.

Register by calling 888-224-2480, faxing your registration form to 877-927-1563 or registering online at www.americanconference.com/obsmal.

In a decision of broad impact tomedical malpractice lawsuits across Maryland, a circuit judge in Rockville
has refused to apply the state’s “cap” on non-economic damages in a malpractice case.

Judge John Debelius ruled that when the Maryland General Assembly revised the damage cap in 2005 to lower the amount that malpractice victims could recover from negligent doctors and hospitals, the legislature exempted casesin which the parties had not first gone through the state’s pre-suit arbitration system.

The decision was handed down late on April 20, 2009 in the case of Semsker v. Lockshin. The case concerned the death of 47-year-old Richard Semsker, a Bethesda employment attorney, from malignant melanoma, a curable skin cancer. A jury last November found a prominent dermatology practice, Norman
A. Lockshin, M.D., P.A., in Silver Spring, Md., was liable for Mr. Semsker’s death because one of the practice’s dermatologists, Michael Albert, M.D., failed to remove a suspicious mole from Mr. Semsker’s back, which later turned into melanoma. The jury awarded damages to Mr. Semsker’s widow and
two daughters in the amount of $5.8 million. The verdict included $3 million for the widow and children’s grief and loss of companionship, and Mr. Semsker’s own suffering as he battled the cancer over the last year of his life.
(more…)