LOJACK FOR SURGEONS, AND HAPPY MEDICAL LIABILITY EXECUTIVES

Florida’s medical malpractice liability insurers have been profiting for the past 6 years. New liability companies apparently can’t wait to write medical malpractice “products” there.  Here is the News Press’s take on how robust Florida’s market for medical liability insurance has become.

And as Alan Belsky points out in in his firm’s blawg, Maryland Malpractice Lawyer , this comfort level for the insurance companies is not confined to Florida. In Pennsylvania, a physician-supported pool saw a 61% decline in claims, and there has been an exponential rise in liability insurers wanting to do business there.

Why do I point this out?  Because unfortunately, the AMA,insurance industry lobbyists,  and  politicians across this country, are continuing their urgent calls for tort “reform,” claiming that doctors are fleeing, or hanging it up altogether, due to the medical malpractice “crisis.”  But if that were true, who are the profitable medical liability companies profiting from?  And why are more of them opening up shop?  That’s right.  There are plenty of doctors around, and they all have to buy insurance.

And in medical-legal news, RF (radio frequency) tags are proving to be an excellent tool in the effort to decrease the leaving behind of surgical sponges in patients following surgery, according to OutpatientSurgery .  The RF tags embedded in the sponges  work like the anti-theft tags used in retail stores, and nurses need only pass an RF detection wand over patients to discover what the sponge count failed to account for.  Current studies claim there are also no false positives or negatives.  Lojack has arrived in the OR, and we are better off for it.