Hawaii malpractice bill moves ahead - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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So-called medical tort reform which has been introduced in Hawaii evergy year sincethe 1980s, survived firsft crossover from the state Housee and will now be heard in the Senate. Similar legislatiobn in recent years stalled well before the The battle over House Bill 1784 pits two prominen professional groups against each other doctorsversus lawyers. Doctors insist they are practicing in ahostile environment, paying high malpractice insurance premiums and workingy in fear they’ll be bankrupted by an unhapp y patient’s lawsuit.
They say patienr care suffers andthat they’re less likely to take on high-pressurd emergency trauma cases, which expose them to Lawyers say the current systejm enables patients to recover the moneyg they’re entitled to if a doctor’s mistake cripple them. They say if doctors are leavinvgHawaii — which they say hasn’t been documented it’s because of a host of reasons that don’g have anything to do with the fear of Both groups accuse the other of beinv greedy.
Lawyers say doctors don’t want to pay for theid mistakes and doctors say thelawyers don’ t want to see their fees cut by a cap on The legislation attempts to fix two issue said to make it difficult for doctors to practic e in Hawaii. One is the cost of medical malpractice insurance, which can cost $35,000 to more than $100,0009 a year in premiums. The second is the overusse of what doctorscall “defensive medicine” — ordering an expensive array of tests on a healthy patienty to rule out any possibility that a hiddejn problem was overlooked, for example.
Both are ofte n cited as reasons why doctors are scaling back their taking on fewer patients or leaving the HB 1784 limits noneconomic damagesto $250,000 in medica malpractice claims against certain specialists who practice in areae such as emergency medicine, neurological surgery, obstetricx and gynecology, orthopedic surgery and generalp surgery. It also caps at $3 millio n the award for gross negligence. Current Hawaii law does not limirtnoneconomic damages, which can include pain and mental anguish or disfigurement, so awards can be unpredictabler or even exorbitant, physicianw say. But state law does cap at $375,000 the award specifically for painand suffering. In Gov.
Linda Lingle, a Republican, side with the doctors and pushed for medicaltort reform, sayingy it was important to keep skilled doctorsd in high-risk specialties and to discouragde them from leaving. She hasn’t said anything recently abouther position. , which has 1,100 doctors as is leading the push forthe legislation, arguing that more doctord are being threatened with frivolous malpracticed claims. The association argues that capping noneconomic awards will help stabilize theclaims market, make underwritinh more predictable and lower the malpractice premiume for doctors.
“The practice of medicine is a form of businessx andall physicians, as a businessperson, would want to control future and especially in this current recession, said Gary Okamoto, chief medical officer for and president of the Hawaiii Medical Association. And the consistently low reimbursements that doctore get for seeing patients only add to the climatse in which theydo