Medical Malpractice in Your State

limiting patients' rights does not improve care or lower insurance rates

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Idaho

According to the American Medical Association, Idaho is showing "problem signs," and on its way to becoming a "crisis" state.

Reality Check:

• The number of doctors has gone up, and
• the number of OB/GYNs per 100,000 women remains steady.
  

Idaho already caps noneconomic damages.

Insurance Reform: With declining payments to victims and an increasing number of physicians, it may appear like Idaho's severe restrictions on patients' rights worked. Unfortunately, only the insurance companies have benefited from less accountability. Idaho malpractice insurers raised rates by more than 27% between 2003 and 2004.

In 2004, claims payments to victims of malpractice dropped over $2.3 million at Idaho's largest malpractice insurer, The Medical Insurance Exchange of California (MIEC). Yet, MIEC still raised premiums for doctors, raking in more than $18.4 million dollars. The "crisis" in medical malpractice is an excuse for insurers to raise premiums even as claims payments to victims are dropping.

Medical Malpractice & Preventable Errors

Patient Safety Should Come First

Instead of limiting patients' rights, Congress should look to preventing insurance companies from price-gouging doctors and help implement processes that will put patient safety first. Fixing the system to put patient safety first will ultimately bring down costs for everyone. In Idaho alone, preventable medical errors in hospitals cost $78-$133 million a year, according to the consumer safety and health organization Public Citizen.

Nationally, medical errors are a real concern with USA Today reporting that medical errors seriously injure 1 in 10 hospitalized patients.

In fact, the Institute of Medicine reported as early as 1999 that medical errors are a national crisis. Yet, those same researchers recently noted that despite 5 years of calls to action, the medical community has made little progress in reducing the risk to patients who use the healthcare system. In particular, researcher Lucian Leape thinks that the medical community "has deflected attention from saving patients to saving money." read more...

Number of Personal Injury Lawsuits

There is no litigation explosion. The National Center for State Courts Recently reported that:

• Tort filings have declined by 5% since 1993. Contract filings, meanwhile, which are more likely to involve businesses than tort cases, rose by 21% over the same period.¹
  
  
• Automobile tort filings, which make up the majority of all tort claims, have fallen by 5% by 1993 and 14% since their high in 1996.¹
  
  
• Medical malpractice filings per 100,000 population have fallen 1% since 1998.²
  
  
• In 22 of the 30 states that NCSC examined population-adjusted tort findings declined from 1992 to 2001. The average change in tort filings across all 30 states was a 15% decrease.¹
  

Sources:

1. Examining the Work of State Courts, 2003, National Center for State Courts (NCSC) 2004
2. Medical Malpractice Filings per 100,000 Population in 11 and 17 States, 1993-2002, National Center for State Courts, 2004 (unpublished, on file with author)

Updated September 2005