Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Personal Injury Law Blogs -> Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer

Personal Injury Law

: Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer

Stepping On the Little Guy: Utah legislature moves to shield emergency room staff from financial responsibility for their mistakes.

By Steve Lombardi

New Legislation Moving Through the Legislature in Utah

The Utah Legislature passed SB79, a tort reform measure that changes the level of proof needed for patients injured by the negligence of emergency room physicians and staff. This measure would change the burden of proof to the higher standard, 'clear and convincing evidence' from a preponderance of evidence.

Utah Competes With Texas and Hawaii to Attract Incompetent Physicians

This measure will advance the public policy of the State of Utah of allowing physicians and hospital staff with substandard skills to continue to practice in the State of Utah without the fear of being held accountable for maiming or killing patients. A second policy consideration is to being met by transferring the need to insure the risk of E.R. injury to Utah citizens and their dependents who are maimed or killed by emergency room physicians and staff.

How serious is the "malpractice crisis" in Utah's ER's? Yawn....

According to a State Representative in Utah only 20 emergency room malpractice suits were filed in all of 2008, but that was enough for the legislature to act to protect special interests. Utah has a total population of 2.7 million people ranking 34^th of the United States. Those 20 emergency room visits that resulted in lawsuits represented a 0.00001% incidence of lawsuits per Utah resident. The median income in Utah is $50,614 ranking eleventh in the U.S.

During 2006 there were 119 million E.R. visits nation wide. From 1996 to 2006 E.R. visits increased 36% while the number of E.R.s was reduced from 4,019 to 3,833. That's probably good news for new doctors just graduating from medical school. With the number of emergency rooms being reduced their incomes should rise well above the $140,000.00 to $175,000.00 normally paid to new graduates along with loan repayment and a bonus to cover any income taxes that are due. While their starting salaries should increase the cost of insuring their mistakes during practice will be passed on to the patients. This will increase the net profit of being a physician; making more brick and mortar projects feasible. Of course it will do nothing to improve the quality of health care or the fact most physicians are overworked and this is probably the main reason for making mistakes. In essence the State of Utah is now eliminating the mechanism for insuring medical mistakes are made public.

The median income for emergency room physicians in the United States is $173,455.00.

Campaign contributions are very effective in getting protectionist and special interest legislation passed.

And while incomes for new physicians should be on the rise the ability of patients to hold them legally responsible for mistakes in care will be made almost impossible to prove. This will increase the net incomes of all emergency room physicians while passing on the costs of medical mistakes to their patients. As most of us already know it pays to heavily contribute to political campaigns.

There is no indication from the Utah legislature how many of the 20 malpractice claims were successful and how much was actually paid out in claims; so the amount of damage those doctor's would have been allowed to avoid and to pass on the injured patients is not known.

Several hospitals in Utah are for profit entities not owned by any government entity. I was unable to locate the amount of campaign contributions each made to those legislators who voted for the bill.

A recent study (Annals of Emergency Medicine) finds this increase in the use of the E.R. is not by the uninsured, but by well-off people whose family doctor can't get them in quickly enough.

Utah's Public Policy Statement Falls Short of Being a Leader in Providing Quality Health Care

Good public policy and common sense would indicate that if patients will be asked to insure the medical mistakes of others that the legislature would require publication of the incidence of mistakes and infection rates for medical providers. That is not the case. Patients are left with guessing as to the risk of care in Utah ER's. It appears that a visit to the ER in Utah has become a crap shoot. Check in and hope you don't get the doctor whose come to Utah to avoid financial responsibility for his or her mistakes.

As a Patient Can You Afford to Insure Medical Mistakes?

If you aren't one of those citizens with $1 to $5 million in medical and disability coverage you might consider the effects on your life should you get to be one of the 20 unfortunate statistics? Tourists to Utah should consider vacationing in some other state that doesn't reward incompetence and allows passing the costs on to the unfortunate patient who has an accident requiring emergency care.

What example does this set for the young?

To the youth of Utah hear this message: Intellectual dishonesty is a valuable crutch of greed politicians and professionals holding onto power while grabbing more than their fair share of wealth.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).