Problem Facing U.S. Health Care System Concerned Medical Malpractice Frivolous Lawsuits Driving Practitioners Medicine

Medical Malpractice/Frivolous Lawsuits

The Effect of Medical Malpractice/Frivolous Lawsuits on Healthcare

The costs of medical malpractice insurance are rising yearly. These expenses affect medical practitioners in a number of ways, including such things as from where they choose to practice medicine, to the number of tests and types and medical procedures ordered. Many doctors in various specialties are aware that the laws and regulations that govern malpractice insurance vary from state to state. Since the averages fluctuate dramatically a doctor will sometimes choose a location in which to practice based on malpractice insurance costs (Writing, NDI).

There are a number of factors that give rise to these variations among states, each individual insurer sets its own premiums for medical malpractice insurance, and these are based on incidents of litigation and other general assessments of the risk pool. This means the insurance companies providing insurance within the state look at the potential for lawsuits within that state, within that branch of medicine, and set insurance rates. Different specialties have different average costs because of varying levels of risk and the history of past litigation within those specialists. For example, obstetrics have a very high rate of litigation. Damages tend to be high when an infant is harmed at birth because that infant will have to deal with that injury for its entire lifetime. As a rule the more potential for things to go wrong as a result of medical negligence, the higher the average insurance rates tend to be within that specialty (Baicker & Chandra, 2004).

Discussion

Rapidly rising medical malpractice premiums have become an issue of increasing concern for physicians, policy makers, and the general public. It is worthy to note that although the quantity of malpractice awards has increased, the number of malpractice lawsuits has decreased. These increases in the amount restitution awarded in medical tort claims have altered the economic incentives of medical specialization. Some policy makers and interest groups have called for tort reform measures, such as caps on non-economic damages in malpractice suits, to limit the growth of premiums. Medical specialists that frequently perform procedures are at a higher risk of litigation. Surgical specialties accounted for the top medical specialties in terms of the percentage of practitioners facing malpractice claims, 7.4% of all physicians experienced a malpractice suit from 1991 to 2005. However, there was a large degree of variation by specialty. Surgeons faced the highest rates of negligence claims at 19.1% for neurosurgeons, 18.9% for thoracic-cardiovascular surgeons, and 15.3% for general surgeons. On the other hand only 5.2% of family medicine physicians, 3.1% of pediatricians, and 2.6% of psychiatrists faced claims of negligence. By the age of 65, 75% of physicians in "low-risk" specialties have faced a complaint of medical malpractice, whereas 99% of physicians in "high risk" specialties were reported to have been sued by that point in their career (Walker, 2011).

In response, a number of states have taken steps to alleviate the rise in damages awarded to plaintiffs in malpractice suits, in the hopes of reversing this trend. In 2003 the Texas legislature passed a set of laws capping non-economic damages to $250,000 for claims against individual physicians and $500,000 for claims against medical institutions. This enactment has had an encouraging effect upon the number of physicians licensed in Texas. Since 2003 24,583 new physicians have been licensed in the state. Additionally, the proportion of "high risk" specialists within the state has also increased over this period (Walker, 2011).