Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Impact of Lawsuit Abuse on Healthcare
The impact of Maryland’s legal climate on healthcare and potential solutions to lawsuit abuse were the focus of a panel discussion held by Maryland Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (MDCALA) last week.
MDCALA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading awareness and educating the public about the costs and consequences of lawsuit abuse. The discussion panel included Assistant Director of Emergency Medicine at Harbor Hospital Dr. Ron Elfenbein, Legislative Chair of the Nurse Practitioner Association of Maryland Susan Delean-Botkin, Executive Vice President of Risk Management of Medstar Larry Smith, and Schwartz Metz & Wise Partner Jay Schwartz.
Elfenbein and Delean-Botkin said primary care physician shortage is a major problem facing Maryland with low reimbursement rates and high malpractice insurance rates as probable causes.
Elfenbein said that, while 70 percent of defendants win malpractice cases, the lawsuits still have effects on the physician’s practice, causing more defensive medicine.
“Studies have shown that when doctors get sued, they begin to practice more defensively,” he said. “What that means is ordering more useless tests and admitting people when they don’t need to be admitted. This drives up costs and wait times.” Elfenbein added that Maryland has the second worst rating for emergency room wait times at four and a half hours on average. Delean-Botkin also said defensive medicine costs about $2,000 a person per year.
Smith and Schwartz said another major issue facing the industry is the increase of physicians being employed by hospital groups rather than running private practices. This has caused the loss of personal relationships and an element of trust between physicians and their patients.
“How do we address all of these issues? Well, they’re complicated problems, with complicated solutions, but we’re complicated people and we can figure this out,” Schwartz said. “One piece of it certainly is that we need to get restraints on these sorts of malpractice lawsuits.”
Smith said that current issues in the legislature regarding lawsuit abuse are very narrow and a much broader conversation about the issues needs to be had.
“Let’s have a discussion about what we really need to make sure we can get the work done that needs to be done, and that we can have the quality healthcare that we all want,” he said.
For more information, visit MDCALA’s website here, or contact Maryland Chamber Vice President o Government Affairs Ron Wineholt at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
