In 2003 the Texas Legislature made significant changes to the medical malpractice law in Texas. Those changes are set out in Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 74.001, et. seq. The 2003 changes severely limit the rights of victims of malpractice, including capping damages that can be recovered for physical pain and mental anguish (Section 74.301), giving the trial court the power to allow defendants to pay future damages periodically instead of in one lump sum (Section 74.503) and requiring an injured person to file expert reports within 120 days of the defendants answering the lawsuit (Section 74.351). Other changes limit a victim’s rights to recover damages at all, such as Section 74.153, which requires an injured plaintiff to prove that a health care provider providing care in an emergency room setting was grossly negligent before recovery is allowed. Such a limitation on the rights of the injured is almost unheard of in the law. One of the alleged reasons for these changes was that doctors were ordering unnecessary tests in order to make sure they did not commit malpractice. This was called “defensive medicine”- doctors ordering tests not because they are necessary but because they will defend against lawsuits being filed. If the 2003 laws were passed, it was argued, there would be a savings in total medical costs, benefiting all of society. While there was little or no data to support this claim, the Texas Legislature did not care, and the 2003 changes to the law were passed, significantly impacting an individual’s ability to obtain justice. Now a study of the impact of the Texas law has been completed and has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Turns out that there has been no reduction in the costs of medical care. Your rights were taken without reason.
For a synopsis of the article, go to: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1313308?query=TOC.
