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Public Citizen
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 2, 2003
4:36 PM
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CONTACT:
Public
Citizen
(202) 588-7742
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New Study Debunks Claims of an Impending Medical
Malpractice Insurance "Crisis" in Rhode Island;
Real Malpractice Crisis Involves "Repeat
Offender" Doctors; Overall Insurance Premiums, Malpractice
Payments to Injured Patients Have Decreased, Study Finds
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| WASHINGTON
- April 2 - Contrary to the alarmist rhetoric spread by the state's
medical and business lobbies, the temporary malpractice insurance
spikes experienced by doctors in many states are not on the horizon
in Rhode Island, according to a report issued today by Public
Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization. The report
concludes that instead, the most significant, long-term medical
malpractice "crisis" in Rhode Island is the unreliable quality
of care being delivered to state residents by a relatively small
proportion of the state's doctors.
The annual
amount of medical malpractice insurance premiums that Rhode Island
doctors pay has decreased since 1992 when inflation is taken into
account, the study found. Also, the amount of malpractice payouts
Rhode Island insurers make annually to patients who have suffered
from doctor errors has decreased since 1992 when inflation is
considered. Moreover, there has been a significant decrease in
the number of malpractice payouts made in the state to patients,
while the number of physicians in Rhode Island increased by 11
percent from 2,623 in 1999 to 2,915 in 2002.
Public Citizen
released the report as the issue gains attention nationally and
in Rhode Island, where lawmakers are considering legislation that
would make it harder for injured patients to seek compensation
for their injuries. Nationally, the U.S. Senate may soon consider
a measure that would cap awards for pain and suffering damages
in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. U.S. Sens. Jack Reed
(D) and Lincoln Chafee (R), both representing Rhode Island, will
play a key role in determining the fate of that legislation in
Congress.
"Capping damages
will only hurt those who have been most severely injured by health
provider negligence," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.
"Congress and state legislatures should enact measures to stop
insurance company price spikes, not penalize patients who have
already suffered from negligence."
Repeat offender
doctors are responsible for more than half of malpractice costs
in Rhode Island, the study found. Between September 1990 and September
2002, 4.8 percent of Rhode Island's doctors were responsible for
52.7 percent of all malpractice payments to patients, according
to information obtained from the federal government's National
Practitioner Data Bank. This small number of doctors made two
or more malpractice payments worth a total of $104.7 million.
Further, just 1.6 percent of the doctors made three or more payments
to patients, representing 26 percent of all payments.
Less than one-third
of doctors who made four or more malpractice payments to patients
have been disciplined by the state medical board. Rhode Island
is one of the nation's less stringent states in disciplining doctors,
ranking 35th among all states and the District of Columbia in
2002, according to Public Citizen's annual ranking of state medical
boards. The state has yet to fully implement a 1997 law mandating
public disclosure of profiles of individual physicians. Although
some profiles are available online, they omit two crucial categories:
malpractice information and criminal convictions. The system is
scheduled for an update this summer, but the profiles still will
not contain data on doctors' malpractice payouts.
According to
Public Citizen's report, The Facts About Medical Malpractice in
Rhode Island (available at http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/medmal/articles.cfm?ID=9271):
- Medical errors
cause 164 to 365 preventable deaths in Rhode Island each year.
These errors cost residents, families and communities $63 million
to $108 million annually in lost wages, lost productivity and
increased health care costs. In contrast, medical malpractice
insurance costs Rhode Island's doctors less than $22 million annually.
- Rhode Island's
doctors paid $21.6 million in premiums for malpractice insurance
in 2001, compared to $19.5 million in 1996, an increase of 11
percent. Adjusting for medical inflation, which was 19.8 percent
during the same period, and the growing number of physicians in
the state, this represents a significant decline in actual dollars.
- According
to the National Practitioner Data Bank, the number of medical
malpractice payments to patients by Rhode Island doctors declined
21 percent, from 73 in 1997 to 58 in 2001.
- Annual malpractice
payments to patients by Rhode Island insurers have decreased when
inflation is considered. The amount of malpractice payments made
to Rhode Island patients was $22.8 million in 2001, a $1.7 million
or 8 percent increase over $21.1 million in 1992, equaling 0.9
percent a year. However, during this same period, costs for medical
care increased 47 percent nationwide, an average of 5.2 percent
a year.
"Long-term
solutions to reducing malpractice insurance costs lie in reducing
medical errors," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's
Congress Watch. "Data show that the legal system is not the problem.
There are too many medical errors and too much medical negligence,
a lot of which could be prevented with stronger disciplining of
the relatively few repeat offender doctors."
In addition
to effective doctor discipline, the study suggests that states
require hospitals and other health care providers to institute
meaningful risk prevention programs. Hospitals should implement
measures to curb errors, such as using computers to order and
track prescriptions (these can cut errors by 55 percent), requiring
proper hand-washing to reduce infections, addressing the nursing
shortage and reducing the long hours of medical residents. Also,
insurance risk should be spread, reducing the number of classifications
of doctor specialties. Risk pools for some are too small and thus
overly influenced by a few losses and the concentration in a few
specialties of doctors handling the highest risk patients.
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