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Thornberry Introduces Legislation to Create Special Health Courts April 12, 2005 Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas has introduced legislation in the House that would authorize funding for states to create special health courts on a pilot project basis.
Known as the Medical Liability Procedural Reform Act of 2005, HR 1546 would authorize grants to as many as seven states to establish special health courts to restore reliability to medical justice. The hallmark of the courts would be full-time judges with health care expertise, whose sole focus would be on addressing medical malpractice cases. Each participating state would be required to report on the effectiveness of the health courts, and the U.S. Attorney General would be required to hire a research organization to evaluate them.
"American healthcare is in crisis, in part because patients and doctors have both lost confidence in the medical justice system," said Rep. Thornberry. "The solution, which this bill promotes, is a system of special courts which ensure that malpractice cases will be resolved by judges with the necessary medical expertise to guarantee consistency among similar cases."
"With this bill, Congressman Thornberry has taken a crucial step toward restoring reliability to medical justice," said Philip K. Howard, Chair of Common Good. "This bill sets the stage for a dramatic improvement in health care in America."
More than 80 of the nation's most prominent leaders in health care and law--including patient safety experts and 11 deans of medical schools or schools of public health--recently called for the creation of special health courts as a way of restoring reliability to medical justice. Their call was precipitated by the inadequacies and inequities of the current system:
- At present, only two percent of patients with medical injuries due to substandard care file a claim, and even fewer receive compensation. Those who do receive compensation will have waited an average of four years in the court system before receiving a dime.
- The current system cannot reliably distinguish good doctors from bad ones, exposing medical professionals who have done nothing wrong to the risk of ruinous liability. Studies estimate that 80 percent of claims involve situations where doctors did no wrong. Nonetheless, plaintiffs receive compensation in a quarter of these cases.
- The current system harms patient quality and safety. Fear of litigation drives costly and inefficient "defensive medicine," while creating incentives for health care providers to cover up their own mistakes and the mistakes of their colleagues. This culture of silence prevents doctors from learning from mistakes, and leads to needless suffering and death.
- The current medical liability system does not provide consistent rulings on the standard of care from case to case. Instead, jurors determine the standard of care on an ad-hoc basis, which means that no precedents are set and that like cases are not decided alike.
Download HR 1546, the Medical Liability Procedural Reform Act of 2005.
Read Common Good's press release.
Read more about Common Good's proposal to create special health courts.
Visit U.S. Representative Mac Thornberry's website.
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