Volume of malpractice suits drops
By Richard GazarikCourt filings decreased from 2,686 in 2000 to 1,989 last year, according to data released this week by Chief Justice Ralph Cappy. At the same time, defense attorneys representing physicians won 73 percent of the lawsuits that went to trial, the study found.
In January, Cappy ordered county court administrators to count the number of malpractice lawsuits filed in each of the state's 67 counties. This is the first time such a survey has been done. Cappy said court administrators will continue to track the data.
The findings appear to refute claims made by physicians and the Pennsylvania Medical Society that a proliferation of lawsuits and sizable monetary awards against doctors are the major reasons behind the increasing cost of medical malpractice insurance.
Chuck Moran, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Medical Society, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday afternoon.
Although Cappy warned the data is "not 100 percent accurate," he added he is confident that the statistics "show certain trends" that will help Gov. Ed Rendell and state lawmakers come up with a solution to the crisis that has pitted physicians against the state's trial lawyers.
"Overall, the statistics appear to be reasonably accurate," Cappy said.
In Allegheny County, the number of lawsuits declined from 392 to 272; in Armstrong, from five to two; Fayette County, from 22 to 13; Washington, from eight to four; and Westmoreland, from 58 to 34.
Indiana County was the only county in the region in which the number of cases increased, and that was by three cases during the four-year period.
The study also found fewer awards and settlements of $1 million or higher than the medical community claims to have seen.
In the past four years, there were only four cases in which payouts exceeded $10 million or more. During that same period, there were five cases in which payouts ranged between $5 million and $10 million.
There were 25 cases in which plaintiffs received awards ranging from $1 million to $5 million, and 17 in the range of $500,000 to $1 million, the study revealed.
Richard Gazarik can be reached at rgazarik@tribweb.com or (724) 830-6292.
Some medical-malpractice reforms passed by state lawmakers in 2002 are starting to pay off.
The number of medical-malpractice cases filed in Pennsylvania dropped by 29 percent last year compared with the average for 2000-2002.
The biggest decline - 52 percent - was in Philadelphia.
The findings were released yesterday by Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Cappy. Cappy had asked counties for a better count of malpractice cases after Gov. Rendell said reform efforts were difficult to evaluate because of a lack of data.
"These results are encouraging, though we are hesitant to infer a definite trend" from just one year of data, said state court administrator Zygmont Pines.
Pines said most of the medical- malpractice cases transferred out of Philly in 2003 probably ended up in Montgomery County, where filings shot up 372 percent.
He attributed the jump to a law passed in 2002 requiring lawyers to file cases in the county where the alleged malpractice occurred. The law eliminated "venue shopping," in which lawyers filed their cases in plaintiff-friendly Philadelphia.
Legislative leaders said the court's findings were proof reforms are working.
"My hope is that we will soon start to see insurance rates decrease accordingly, " House Majority Leader Sam Smith said in a statement.
That has yet to happen. Further, payments made by a state-run insurance fund called MCARE to settle claims actually increased to $377 million in 2003 from $349 million in 2002. MCARE's claims year ended on Aug. 31.
Data shows number of medical malpactice suits dropped in 2003
By MARC LEVY
Associated Press Writer
HARRISBURG (AP, March 18) - One-third fewer medical malpractice lawsuits were filed in Pennsylvania last year than were filed in 2002, according to preliminary figures released this week by the state Supreme Court.
The count, the first of its kind in the state, was meant to indicate whether tighter rules for filing lawsuits could help stabilize the rising insurance premiums that physicians say are forcing them to leave the state or close their practices.
In addition, the new research shows that only a fraction of the lawsuits filed eventually reach a jury verdict. Of those jury verdicts, nearly three-fourths favored the physicians and hospitals who are typically the defendants.
But the figures do not show the fate of the other cases that did not reach a verdict -- whether still pending, dismissed or settled -- or how much money was paid out to the alleged victims of medical mistakes. Meanwhile, the state's larger malpractice insurers have continued to raise rates in recent months, although the increases have not been as steep as the previous year's jumps.
The court's new numbers were injected into a heated dialogue over who or what is to blame for the rising medical malpractice insurance premiums.
Physicians, hospitals, insurers and many Republicans have clamored for changes to a court system that they say returns huge jury awards. But some Democrats, victims' advocates, and lawyers insist that hospitals must work harder to protect patients and the state must stop insurers from using questionable business practices that result in volatile rate swings.
Many in government from both parties credited the drop in the number of lawsuits filed to the reforms the Legislature passed in 2002.
"I look at those numbers and say, 'That's a good sign,'" Sam Smith, the House Republican leader from Jefferson County, said Thursday. "That's the outcome we were hopeful for when (House Republicans) initiated this."
Some, including those in the hospital industry, cautioned that the one-year drop does not necessarily indicate a trend. And Mark Phenicie, a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association, noted that "all the public pressure that has been mounted on this issue has made attorneys more reluctant to take marginal cases."
But while Phenicie said that the Legislature, physicians, and hospitals "should declare victory and move on," Smith and other Republican lawmakers said they will continue to pursue the controversial step of limiting the dollar amount that juries can award for pain and suffering.
Regardless of whether those limits on jury awards ever materialize, Gov. Ed Rendell said Thursday that the new figures should bring relief to the health-care industry, which complains that it is often less expensive to settle lawsuits than to pay lawyers and expert witnesses to defend against them.
"Even if they won their cases in front of juries ... they incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs," said Rendell, himself a lawyer. "It's not just the verdicts, it's the cost of litigation."
The count by courthouse staffs across the state found that 1,989 malpractice cases were filed in 2003, down from 2,957 in 2002, 2,714 in 2001, and 2,686 in 2000. The figures aren't entirely final yet: those from Delaware County were only complete through Nov. 24, 2003.
From January 2000 to July 2003, 1,143 lawsuits reached a verdict, and juries decided 834 of those in favor of the defendants.
Philadelphia -- blamed by physicians and insurers for producing juries that dump huge awards on plaintiffs -- saw the largest numerical drop in cases filed, from 1,365 in 2002 to 577 last year, or 58 percent.
But the court staff that oversaw the count noted that some cases that would have been filed in Philadelphia in the past were instead filed in other counties, such as Montgomery County, which practically saw a fivefold jump from 32 in 2002 to 151 last year.
The legislative reforms include requiring that an independent physician or expert certify the viability of a medical malpractice lawsuit and ending the practice of "venue shopping" in which attorneys move cases to the county where a favorable jury verdict is most likely.
The latter was conceived to end the alleged practice of filing a lawsuit in Philadelphia to capitalize on supposedly favorable juries there, even if the incident happened outside the city.