Top Kentucky court strikes down law on medical review panels
Kentucky physicians will continue to face meritless lawsuits thanks to a recent commonwealth high court ruling.
The Supreme Court of Kentucky has struck down a 2017 state law that created a medical review panel, a group of experts who were to evaluate medical liability claims to ensure they had merit before a plaintiff filed a lawsuit against a health care provider.
The Litigation Center of the American Medical Association and State Medical Societies and the Kentucky Medical Association (KMA) filed an amicus brief (PDF) that urged the Kentucky Supreme Court to keep the law intact after a patient seeking to file a claim challenged the law shortly after it was passed. The Litigation Center (PDF) also helped offset the expenses the KMA incurred in the trial court.
KMA leaders said they were "extremely disappointed" in the ruling in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Claycomb.
"Kentucky now remains one of the few states in the country with no meaningful tort reform, including medical liability reform, making our system more susceptible to higher costs and frivolous lawsuits," the KMA said in a statement after the ruling.
Implementation of medical review panels dates back to 1975, when Indiana began using them to weed out frivolous lawsuits before physicians and the health care system had to spend money to defend meritless claims. More than a dozen states now have laws that require some form of a medical review panel that must give an OK before a medical liability lawsuit is filed, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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