Tenn. Report: Medical Malpractice Payments Rise

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Insurers paid out about 14 percent more in Tennessee medical malpractice cases in 2005 than the year before, a state study released found.

Insurers paid out $119 million in settlements last year and another $6 million for five court judgments. That was up from $108 million in settlements and about $2 million in judgments in 2004, according to the state Department of Commerce and Insurance study.

More than four in five of the 2,366 medical malpractice cases resolved resulted in no damage payments in 2005, an uptick of 2 percentage points over 81 percent settling without damages in 2004.

Insurers collected $341 million in medical malpractice premiums in 2005, a 4 percent increase over 2004. About 5,680 open cases remained at the end of the year, including 295 that originated in 2005.

Legislative Republicans this year tried to renew their push to limit damages from medical malpractice lawsuits. But a bill supported by the American Medical Association was unable to gain much traction, despite weekly visits from doctors and other medical professionals at the Capitol.

Advocates of limiting malpractice lawsuit awards say doctors are being driven out of business by rising malpractice insurance premiums, and that the remaining physicians are forced to stop performing high-risk treatment for fear of being sued.

But the AMA’s declaration that Tennessee is in a “medical liability crisis” may have lost some of its potency by the fact that the Volunteer State was the 21st state to be given such a designation by the association.

Republicans in the state Senate later tried to amend Gov. Phil Bredesen’s Cover Tennessee health care proposal this year to get the administration to include limits on medical malpractice lawsuits.

But the measure failed despite the Republican’s 18-14 edge in the Senate at the time. The governor’s office had argued that medical malpractice limits had nothing to do with the legislation’s goal to reduce the uninsured population in the state.

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On the Net:

Department of Commerce and Insurance:
http://www.tennessee.gov/commerce