| |
Special points of interest:
|
It’s An Emergency!
The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) has now released its second National Report Card on the condition of emergency medicine in the United States and the results are “sobering,” to use their word. As in the last report card, issued in 2006, emergency care barely garnered a C- overall grade, in large part because of the corrosive effects of the medical liability environment (one of five categories graded), which itself came in with a C-.
While some states have cleaned up their act, the report highlights the “adverse legal environments” in many others that are forcing physicians to “decrease their availability to emergency patients or move to states with less liability exposure.” This comes at a time when our creaking health care system puts increasing demands on emergency care facilities to provide routine care to patients. Since 1996, in fact, patient visits to the ER have risen 32 percent. You can read the full report here.
Relief for Arizona?
In Arizona, patient access to care may see improvement under a new Governor. President-elect Obama’s choice of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security clears the way for Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer to ascend to the Governorship and give liability reform a fighting chance.
As we all remember too well, Governor Napolitano vetoed urgently needed legislation in 2006 that would have given some protections to ER physicians battling liability suits and secured patients’ access to care in Arizona. Since then, the situation has continued to deteriorate, and pro-reform state senator Carolyn Allen of Scottsdale is planning to introduce similar legislation soon. With luck, Arizona will be able to raise its grade point average from the abysmal D+ awarded it by ACEP. You can read about Senator Allen’s bill here.
No Last Call for the Trial Bar
The trial bar is one bar that never closes. They just keep bringing it on. Even in California, where the pioneering MICRA law has protected patients’ access to specialty care since the 1970s, hardly a year goes by without a legal challenge to reform. In Texas, neither a constitutional amendment nor the overwhelming success of reform in bringing doctors back and improving care has provided any immunity from continuing lawsuits. As we’ve been reporting, Illinois, which has twice before seen medical liability reforms thrown out by the State Supreme Court, is currently awaiting that court’s ruling on the constitutionality of reasonable limits on non-economic damages that were put in place in 2005. You can read a Wall Street Journal editorial on the subject here.
The judges might want to consider the grade of D issued by ACEP for that state’s current liability environment. While the 2005 reforms prevented the situation from utter collapse, Illinois continues to suffer both the highest average liability payments and the highest average liability premium for physicians ($71,467) in the nation. “You can’t ask emergency physicians to do more and more and yet protect them less and less,” says William P. Sullivan, President of the Illinois chapter of ACEP. Without some change, the problems “will become even worse” and those seeking emergency care in Illinois will be hit hardest. You can read the Illinois report card here.
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, concerned physicians have called on Governor Brad Henry to convene a special session of the Legislature to fashion new civil justice guidelines after that state’s Supreme Court recently struck down current guidelines that required plaintiffs to obtain a certificate of merit before they could file a liability lawsuit. You can read the full story here.
Unless and until we muster the ability to take our case to Congress and pass federal liability reform, such legal skirmishes will be a constant fact of life, and Americans’ access to quality medical care will never be secure.
|
