Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

The Baltimore Sun ran a story on Tuesday about the shortage of doctors in Maryland's rural areas.

The problem rural areas have is that doctors cannot earn what they can in more urban areas. Historically, MedChi, the Maryland state medical society, has tried to wrap all of these problems up and place them at the feet of Maryland medical malpractice lawyers causing their malpractice insurance rates to be too high.

This was always beyond silly because rural areas have so few successful medical malpractice claims in Maryland and malpractice rates reflect this fact. Thankfully, this Baltimore Sun article is void of any claims that the root of the problem is medical malpractice lawyers. I'm not sure if the MedChi has just dropped pushing that angle or whether the Baltimore Sun just tuned them out when the tried to blame malpractice lawyers. Either way, it is a welcome development.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-md.rural28jul28,0,7434366.story

Many doctors in South Florida are reportedly flying with a net: 21% of medical doctors do not have medical malpractice insurance.

I have never seen data in Maryland but I suspect the numbers are lower. My solution is simple: require all doctors practicing medicine in Maryland to have medical malpractice insurance. And while we are at it, all medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland should be required to have legal malpractice insurance as well, least we be accused of being hypocrites.

Medical Economics has an editorial from a medical malpractice defense lawyer who has defended physicians in malpractice cases for over 32 years. The author express the opinion that after having tried over 200 medical malpractice jury trials and won over 90 percent of those cases that if the same cases had been tried before health courts, the number of plaintiff's medical malpractice verdicts would have been much higher.

The idea behind health courts is that specially trained judges or a panel of medical doctors would hear medical malpractice cases without juries and decide liability and/or damages for the malpractice plaintiff.

This malpractice defense lawyer in this editorial praises the malpractice defense bar in Ohio for aggressively defending "questionable cases" as opposed to settling cases where there is only a small possibility of an adverse outcome and goes on to praise doctors for taking "time from their practices to participate in trials." (Actually, I'm not sure participation was optional but okay.)

The author concludes with a reference to that pesky little Seventh Amendment's right to a jury trial, a right that medical malpractice tort reform advocates don't mind turning away from to suit their purposes. Maybe James Madison and his colleagues were on to something when they decided that there was something important about a jury trial. Who knew?

Okay, so now medical malpractice lawyers on both sides believe that health courts do not make any sense. Which makes all the more puzzling the Maryland State Bar Association decision to have a discussion group - that was poorly attended I'm told - on health courts in Maryland. We tried health claims arbitration in Maryland. It failed miserably.