Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

Texas may not have been the first state to welcome tort reforms but I can’t imagine anyone embracing it with such wild enthusiasm as Texans over the past 20 years or so.

It was never hard to sell to the public because of all the promises of savings on insurance premiums touted by tort reform proponents, proving once again that everyone votes in their own self-interest when they pull the voting booth curtain.

During his failed presidential bid, Texas Gov. Rick Perry perpetuated the myth that implementing Texas-style tort reforms would go a long way toward curing what’s wrong with the healthcare system. Perry was polling at 1 percent going into the South Carolina primary.

He recommended that all states to do as Texas did in 2003 when lawmakers enacted legislation aimed at limiting the amount of money juries can award patients who win malpractice lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. The law capped non-economic (pain and suffering) damages at $250,000 in lawsuits against doctors and $750,000 against hospitals. Voters overwhelmingly approved a like-minded constitutional amendment later the same year.

…

Truth is, chances of a Texas family saving a few bucks on premiums would be greater if they moved to another state.

Read More: Henderson Daily News

WASHINGTON — Hospital employees recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.

Yet even after hospitals investigate preventable injuries and infections that have been reported, they rarely change their practices to prevent repetition of the “adverse events,” according to the study, from Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In the report, being issued on Friday, Mr. Levinson notes that as a condition of being paid under Medicare, hospitals are to “track medical errors and adverse patient events, analyze their causes” and improve care.

Nearly all hospitals have some type of system for employees to inform hospital managers of adverse events, defined as significant harm experienced by patients as a result of medical care.

“Despite the existence of incident reporting systems,” Mr. Levinson said, “hospital staff did not report most events that harmed Medicare beneficiaries.” Indeed, he said, some of the most serious problems, including some that caused patients to die, were not reported.

Read More: The New York Times

Alex Winslow, Texas Watch executive director

Insurance interest lobbyist Jon Opelt is crowing about what he deems to be the success of 2003 legal changes that severely restrict the ability of patients to hold negligent doctors accountable when they cause needless injury or even death (“Refuting Texas Watch’s claims”; Dec. 5).

He suggests, as have his brethren in the special interest lobby, that Texas’ supply of physicians is something to boast about.

However, a report just released by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) shows that Texas ranks near the bottom in the number of physicians per capita who are serving our growing state: Texas ranks 46th in the number of active patient care physicians with just 176 per 100,000 population. The median for all states is 215. Texas ranks 48th in the number of active patient primary care physicians with just 62 per 100,000 population. The median for all states is 80.

Read More: Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Perry has bragged that doctors have flocked to Texas since 2003 because of the medical malpractice damage caps and that those caps have help control health care costs in the state.

On Tuesday, however, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a study that debunks those claims.

…

The other study that came out this week that Perry undoubtedly hopes no one will notice came from the Association of American Medical Colleges. The AAMC reported that Texas ranks 48^th in the number of active patient primary care physicians per 100,000 population. There are just 62 primary care doctors per 100,000 people in Texas compared to the national median of 80.

Citing the AAMC report, Alex Winslow, executive director of the citizen advocacy organization Texas Watch, said that, “Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the data proves that Texas continues to fall far behind in access to health care. Texas patients need meaningful reforms that improve the cost, quality and access to health care — not empty rhetoric and hollow promises.”

Read More: iWatch News, The Center for Public Integrity

A report just released by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) shows that Texas ranks near the bottom in major categories related to access to medical care. Texas-based medical and insurance interest groups assert that restricting the rights of patients has improved the supply of doctors serving our state. The AAMC data shows the opposite. Read More »

In health reform, there’s a lot of talk about an impending “doctor shortage,” where we’ll have too few physicians to treat a population that’s getting increasingly older and sicker. By 2020, we’ll have 90,000 fewer doctors than we need, according to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That big number, however, masks a lot of geographic variation. Some states are hugely lacking in doctors; others have many physicians. A few maps released Friday, also by AAMC, probe the geography of our impending doctor shortage and what makes particular states more susceptible than others.

…

Texas, for example, is home to two of the country’s largest cities, Dallas and Houston. It graduated more than 1,200 medical students last year, second only to New York. About 80 percent of doctors who train in Texas stay in Texas. Yet it has one of the lowest levels of doctors seen in the country.

Read More: The Washington Post

CORPUS CHRISTI — Just because Dr. Thomas Wilder and his special interest cohorts keep repeating the same message over and over (and over) again, doesn’t make it true.

His recent opinion piece (“Tort reform benefits speak for themselves,” Nov. 25) claims once again that patients should be gleeful that the insurance and medical industries were successful in 2003 when they stripped patients of our legal right to hold an unscrupulous physician, dangerous hospital, or careless nursing home legally accountable.

Wilder drags out the same tired arguments that proponents have been clinging to for years.

The problem is that each of their arguments have been debunked. For instance, Wilder claims that increases in physician supply in Texas are the result of limiting the rights of patients. The highly-respected, independent fact-checking organization PolitiFact rated a similar assertion by Governor Perry “false.”

Read More: Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Just because special interest lobbyists keep repeating the same thing over and over (and over) again, doesn’t make it true. In a recent op-ed piece, Thomas Wilder from the astro-turf lobby outfit known as the “Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” once again makes the argument that patients should be gleeful that the insurance and medical industries stripped patients of our legal right to hold an unscrupulous physician, dangerous hospital, or careless nursing home legally accountable. Read More »

The U.S. House is set to consider on the Republicans’ Jobs Through Growth Act, which contains a section aimed at reforming medical malpractice by imposing caps on economic and non-economic damages similar to those in place in Texas. Texas limits non-economic and exemplary (punitive) damages in all cases, and limits what relatives can get in cases of wrongful death. An obvious disturbing consequence is that caps reduce compensation to severely-injured individuals. Caps would hurt consumers in a second way — lower damage awards would reduce medical professional liability insurers’ financial incentives to reduce practice risk.

Much of the protection consumers have against irresponsible and negligent behavior on the part of health care providers hinges on oversight and incentives created by the medical professional liability insurance industry. A nationwide shift to caps could result in more cases of negligence and substandard care.

Read More: The Huffington Post

One patient was choked unconscious. Another was punched. A third said she had two teeth knocked out.

All are part of a previously hidden series of violent incidents involving employees of Parkland Memorial Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room, records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show.

Parkland officials have mismanaged care of the mentally ill for years. They hired staff with troubled backgrounds, left them on duty after allegations of abuse and repeatedly neglected to report those allegations to state health authorities, according to records and interviews.

Read More: The Dallas Morning News (subscription required)