NEWS - Florida Passes Three-Strikes Malpractice Law

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Florida Passes Three-Strikes Malpractice Law

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 26, 2004

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 25 (AP) - Florida voters approved a

three-strikes

law this month unlike any other state's: a measure aimed not at killers

or thieves but at doctors who foul up.

The newly approved amendment to the Florida Constitution would

automatically revoke the medical license of any doctor hit with three

malpractice judgments. The ramifications of the measure, which was

supported by lawyers, could be huge.

Legal experts say it could prompt a flood of malpractice suits. Doctors

say it will scare some physicians away from Florida while forcing others

to reach quick malpractice settlements to avoid a " strike. "

" It has branded the state as probably the most unfriendly state for

physicians, " said Dr. Yelverton, an obstetrician and gynecologist

in Tampa.

The three-strikes law is just one salvo in a fierce battle between

doctors and trial lawyers playing out across the country and in

Congress. While several states have taken steps to limit malpractice

awards, the fight is especially intense in Florida, where the cost of

malpractice insurance runs higher than in most other states.

Doctors put their own malpractice measure on the Florida ballot this

year, limiting how much of a malpractice award a lawyer can take as a

fee. Such limits are already in place, but the amendment, which also

passed, further reduces the lawyers' percentage.

Doctors claim that with less chance for a big payday, lawyers will be

more selective about which cases they take.

Lance Block, a lawyer who makes his living primarily by representing

malpractice victims, said the doctors' campaign to limit legal fees was

motivated purely by enmity. " I don't think there's any question that the

purpose of this amendment is to drive lawyers away from

medical-negligence cases, " he said.

Lester Brickman, a professor of legal ethics at the N. Cardozo

School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, said the lawyers

" trumped the doctors " with the three-strikes amendment, because lawyers

will rush to sue in the hope that doctors will settle to avoid a

" strike. "

" In the next 10 years, " he said, " virtually every doctor in the state of

Florida will have been sued. "

The three-strikes measure has yet to take effect. A judge has ruled that

the Legislature first needs to spell out just how it will work.

The number of doctors who would have their licenses revoked by the

three-strikes rule is extremely small, perhaps a dozen or so at the

most, experts say. Florida has slightly fewer than 30,000 active

doctors.

Dr. Yelverton is among the doctors caught in the middle of the fight.

Like thousands of other Florida doctors, he has never gotten in trouble

for making a mistake. He has delivered more than 10,000 babies in his

33-year career.

But Dr. Yelverton, 63, said he had come to feel it was just not worth it

to be a physician in this state, and he now works in the front office of

his practice to develop procedures to reduce the risk of medical

mistakes.

One reason he stopped seeing patients and delivering babies, he said,

was the increase in the cost of his malpractice insurance and the

feeling that at any time he could lose a lot of money in a lawsuit,

whether it had merit or not.

" The hardest thing about giving up a very successful practice of 33

years is that your patients have come to rely on you for what they

consider quality medicine and they have to find someone else, " Dr.

Yelverton said. " And it's one less experienced doctor. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/national/26malpractice.html

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org