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PROFESSIONAL ISSUESKeeping the issue alive: How to keep medical liability in the newsPublic relations professionals and organized medicine leaders who have been working at it offer their thoughts on how to make the media stay interested in tort reform.By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Jan. 31, 2005. The local newspaper reporter wrote about the dramatic increases in physicians' liability premiums when rates started rising in 2001 and 2002. Television reporters covered it, too. Since then, members of the media have interviewed the family physician who stopped delivering babies. They've talked to the physician who retired early. And they've reported on the legislation introduced in several states and in Congress that would limit the noneconomic portion of jury awards, commonly known as the pain and suffering awards. They've covered physician rallies at state capitols urging lawmakers to pass "tort reform now." Newspapers have run editorials and letters to the editor on the topic as well. Yet in many states, the problem shows no signs of abating. Doctors want to keep the issue alive in hopes that lawmakers ultimately will pass the reforms physicians believe will help stabilize the professional liability market. That means that in a day and age when the public and the media devour one topic and quickly move on to the next, doctors must have a strategy for keeping their several-year-old issue from becoming a victim of media fatigue. "It's always going to be a challenge, because you reach a saturation point," said Charles Moran, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Medical Society. But, experts said, the challenge can be met. "[The] bottom line is that these issues have many angles that could be of interest to reporters," said Bill Berry, president of Berry & Company Public Relations, a New York Citybased agency that focuses on health care. "You can keep them alive by providing reporters with information to help them report on a story from different angles. Story fatigue sets in when there is nothing new to report and reporters either can't or don't take the time to develop fresh perspectives." [...]Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2005 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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