Dive Brief:
- Florida's Supreme Court began hearing a case last week that re-examines the constitutionality of limits on damages in malpractice lawsuits, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported.
- The question of whether non-economic damages (pain and suffering) should be limited was a fierce debate when the state overhauled its medical-malpractice system in 2003.
- Justices are looking at whether the state's previous justification for limits -- the perception at that time among physicians of a crisis of high insurance premiums -- still stands, or in fact ever did.
Dive Insight:
With much of the debate hinging on whether there is or ever was an insurance crisis, no satisfactory answer is readily available, suggested Dinah Stein, an attorney for the North Broward Hospital District.
"If we are going to find that the crisis is over, or there was never a crisis, or so forth … it needs to be done with evidence in an [adversarial] proceeding, to determine whether and when this is the case," she said.
The 2003 debate ended with legislators and former Gov. Jeb Bush (R) capping damages at differing levels depending on variables in each case including the number of claimants.
The current re-examination of the issue was sparked by the case of patient Susan Kalitan who was injured in 2007 during the anesthesia process.
Meanwhile, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is trying to change the culture and process around medical errors and malpractice law by promoting a process dubbed Communication and Optimal Resolution (Candor) that was developed through a $23 million federal research grant and has been tested at 14 hospitals across three health systems, Bloomberg reported. If it catches on, the process could potentially save hospitals money, better satisfy patients through increased transparency and help hospitals better address mistakes by eliminating the need to cover them up.