Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

These New York Times letters to the editor are of some interest on the issue of the efficacy of electronic medical records.

An ER doctor writes the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog complaining about how little he was paid last year.

I can't speak to this doctor's salary. But it is hard to argue with fact that most doctors in this country are paid quite well.

When the Saturday Night Live's opening skit started talking about medical malpractice and health care reform (around the 2:00 mark), I was worried what was coming next. But it underscores the silliness of malpractice caps, albeit in a very coarse way:

I watched this weekend the Maryland Court of Appeals oral argument in University of Maryland Medical Systems v. Waldt. (click here, it is a few cases down). I read this case and wrote a treatise of a post on the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog about the case. But watching the oral arguments - for whatever reason - just gives you a different level of understanding about the issues. It is time consuming but really worth the time.

The Pop Tort underscores why a loser pay system is going to weed out a lot more than just frivolous malpractice lawsuits:

The underlying presumption is without basis and grossly unfair (i.e., because a patient loses in court, the case was somehow “frivolous.”) As the Harvard School of Public Health found in 2006, such losses merely “underscore how difficult it may be for plaintiffs and their attorneys to discern what has happened before the initiation of a claim and the acquisition of knowledge that comes from the investigations, consultation with experts, and sharing of information that litigation triggers.”

Medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland appreciate this commentary because anyone how has handled medical malpractice or any other complex tort claim knows that the relative merits of a lawsuit can rise and fall over the course of litigation. The lawsuit process assists in flushing out the merits of any case. Lawsuits - for better or worse for plaintiffs - are a path to the truth. Which is pretty much the idea in the first place.

• Maryland medical malpractice lawsuits: an overview
• Maryland medical malpractice law: a summary

Are you kidding me? Forbes? I just assumed everyone who has ever picked up Forbes though every malpractice lawsuit was frivolous. I never thought I would live to see the day:

Decisions about the tasks physicians take on are best made with information about the magnitude of the underlying risk to patients. In the surplus lines market, malpractice insurance underwriters convey this information to physicians through their brokers in the form of pricing options for insurance. One option may include surgical coverage while another option, with a lower premium, would not cover surgery. This creates the appropriate incentive for physicians to consider the risk associated with their practice patterns.

All of this protects consumers. The potential for surcharges or cancellation of policies offered by admitted carriers and the higher cost of obtaining insurance in the surplus lines market create an incentive for physicians to practice care that meets medical community standards.

Rarely, in the very worst cases, physicians will be denied coverage in the surplus lines market. It may be because the physician is such a danger to the public that there is no viable restriction that would permit the physician to continue in practice. Even when a state medical board fails to sanction a physician who should not be practicing medicine, denial of malpractice insurance precludes affiliations with most hospitals and other provider organizations, protecting consumers served by those providers. In the seven states where medical malpractice is mandated for practice, all consumers benefit from these protections.

Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) today introduced “loser pays” legislation to decrease the number of "frivolous malpractice lawsuits" that increase the cost of medical care. As one doctor wrote last week, it is really hard, given the economics costs for malpractice lawyers to pursue a malpractice lawsuit, to suggest that frivolous malpractice lawsuits are a problem in this country. This is particularly true in states like Maryland where you are required to have a certificate of merit before filing a malpractice lawsuit.