Priority: Preserve Texas’ landmark medical liability reforms and prevent new liability risks that threaten access to care.
Background: Every session, the Texas Medical Association is faced with fending off efforts that chip away at Texas’ medical liability protections, which have been a linchpin in attracting physicians to practice in the state in record numbers. Those challenges routinely include attempts to index the state’s non-economic damages cap to inflation. TMA also will be on guard against the potential creation of new liability risks.
Denison gynecologist J. Timothy Parker, MD, remembers what it was like providing care in Texas before the 2003 medical liability reforms, which set a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical liability lawsuits against individual physicians and a $750,000 total, stacked cap on non-economic damages assessed against physicians and two different health care facilities. There is no Texas cap on economic damages.
“I worried every day that I would get a letter from an attorney. That feeling was so overpowering and so oppressive,” the vice chair of TMA’s Council on Legislation said, noting potential litigation could have amounted to a loss of millions of dollars. “Practicing in Texas was pretty traumatic prior to tort reform.”
For physicians, the absence of non-economic damage caps translated to sky-high medical liability insurance costs and decreased access for rural patients or patients with complex needs.
At that time, “a doctor might have been leery of taking on a certain patient due to their needs being defined as high-risk,” Dr. Parker said. “Medical liability reform allowed more physicians to practice in the state without fear and thus, more patients to find care.”
However, Texas’ non-economic damages cap could face threats after other states undermined similar, long-standing laws: California’s and New York’s state legislatures, for instance, recently passed laws that either gradually increase the existing non-economic damages cap (California) or broaden the types of damages that can be brought in wrongful death cases (New York), meaning medical liability insurance costs will likely rise in those states.
Meanwhile, recent lawsuits in other sectors have created pathways for courts to become more lenient with damage calculations – which puts pressure on existing protections, even in medicine, meant to limit excessive litigation and maintain fair liability standards.
Solutions: Dr. Parker worries many may have forgotten the importance of Texas’ liability protections, which TMA has built upon over the years and now works to ensure to protect physicians from novel risks.
Likewise, TMA lobbyist Michelle Romero warns lawmakers may be unaware that the creation of new liability risks “could have an impact on tort reform as a whole.”
Considering these challenges, Ms. Romero says TMA’s work has become even more essential to stop such threats and to convey to lawmakers how important medical liability protections have been in attracting physicians to practice in Texas – which, in turn, increases Texas patients’ access to care.
In a Texas House with 32 new representatives, only a handful still serving were in office for the historic 2003 medical liability vote, adds TMA chief lobbyist Clayton Stewart.
“Moving forward, TMA will work toward educating lawmakers and others on that topic,” he said.
Alisa Pierce
Reporter, Division of Communications and Marketing
(512) 370-1469