Task Force of Lawyers, Medical Workers Won't Offer Reform Ideas
By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer
A task force of lawyers and medical providers won't
offer the state Legislature medical malpractice reform ideas, despite six
months of deliberations.
The Senate Memorial 7 Task
Force on Health Care Practitioner Liability Insurance final report shows
that two ideas supported by most task force members were rejected by the
New Mexico Medical Society and the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association.
The task force had decided that it would offer only ideas that enjoyed a
"consensus" among members.
Consensus evaded the
group almost from its first meeting in May. The trial lawyers and the
Medical Society, which represents physicians, questioned whether medical
practitioners face problems getting affordable medical malpractice
insurance. The state senate memorial establishing the task force
identified "an escalating crisis in health care access because malpractice
premiums for all types of health care providers are skyrocketing" and
asked the task force to find legislative solutions.
The doctors and lawyers sent a letter Aug. 1 to the task force co-chairmen
that argued insurance problems are the result of poorly trained and
improperly supervised non-physician practitioners and under-staffed or
corrupt nursing homes.
The letter infuriated other
members of the task force, which included representatives of nursing
homes, hospitals, certified nurse anesthetists, midwives and other
professions. They said practice records show physicians pay malpractice
claims more often than other medical professionals
do.
Licensed midwives said a premium that cost an
average practitioner $280 a year in 2001 now costs $11,400. The New Mexico
Hospitals and Health Systems Association said hospital insurance premiums
have increased 49 percent a year for the past five years. One certified
nurse midwife who paid $4,832 for coverage in 1999 paid $17,543 this
year.
Task force members supported in principle
establishment of a state-sponsored joint underwriting association, which
would provide coverage to practitioners who couldn't get affordable
insurance elsewhere. Consensus failed when lawyers would not agree to caps
on damages and when the doctors and lawyers insisted association coverage
be provided only when commercial insurance was not available at any
price.
Doctors and lawyers also rejected a proposal
to amend the 1976 Medical Malpractice Act, which primarily protects
physicians. That law was enacted after insurance companies refused to
write physician malpractice insurance in New Mexico. It caps damages and
requires suits to be reviewed by a panel of doctors and lawyers before
they can proceed to the courts.
Nonphysician
practitioners say the law effectively bars all but physicians from its
purview because it requires the occurrence form of insurance and most
practitioners other than physicians can only buy claims-made
insurance.
Occurrence insurance provides coverage
for injuries that occur during the period the insurance is in force, even
if the injury is reported after the policy is not in force. Claims-made
insurance covers incidents that occur only during the period when the
policy is in force.
The task force majority proposed
amending the act to allow claims-made policies and to allow more
practitioners the act's protections. The Medical Society said opening the
act to amendment would lead to higher caps on malpractice damages and
thereby increase the cost of insurance to physicians.
