The medical liability system remains one of the most vexing issues for physicians today. However, positive reform efforts continue this year.
The current medical liability climate places a wedge between physicians and their patients, according to the AMA. It forces physicians to practice defensive medicine, puts physicians at emotional, reputational and financial risk, and drains resources out of an already financially strapped national health care system—resources that could be used for medical research or expanded access to care for patients.
The AMA is pursuing legislative solutions at both the federal and state levels to address these problems and is actively collaborating with state medical associations and national medical specialty societies to advance these goals.
In 2015, Oklahoma and Virginia tested the waters of the AMA model bill (log in), the Standard of Care Protection Act, which shields physicians from new liability exposure based on quality standards or practice guidelines enacted under the Affordable Care Act or by private or public insurers.
Both traditional and innovative reforms continue to move forward in state legislatures across the country.
- Iowa’s legislature is considering legislation to establish an early disclosure and compensation programs, which seeks to compensate quickly and fairly when unreasonable medical care causes injury, but defend medically reasonable care vigorously.
- States including New York, Maryland, Oregon, and South Carolina are working to enact or work to uphold caps on non-economic damages (log in) in medical liability cases, following activity in California in 2014, where voters defeated a ballot initiative that threated to weaken the state’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), the “gold standard” in capping non-economic damages in medical liability cases.
- States including Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont and West Virginia are considering legislation to reform expert witness standards (log in).
- Maryland and New Jersey are attempting to establish health court systems (log in), separate civil courts specifically for medical liability cases.
- Maryland, New York and West Virginia are working towards legislation for certificates or affidavits of merit (log in), which would require a plaintiff to file, along with a complaint in a medical liability case, an affidavit, usually signed by a health care professional that certifies that the claim has merit.
At the federal level, the AMA is urging Congress to pass liability protections for physicians who volunteer during federally declared disasters and to clarify that performance in quality programs (such as meaningful use and the Value-Based Modifier) cannot be used to establish a new standard of care for liability purposes.
