Below The Beltway

Back in 2003, voters in Texas approved a comprehensive series of initiatives that radically changed medial malpractice law in that state. Caps were imposed on the amount that could be awarded to successful Plaintiff’s in medical malpractice cases for pain and suffering and other noneconomic damages, and the ability of the state courts to evade those limits was severely limited.

At the time, supporters of the initiated cited as one of its benefits the idea that it would make the practice of medicine in the State of Texas easier, and would attract more doctors to the state.

Four years later, it appears that they were absolutely correct:

HOUSTON, Oct. 4 — In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months.

That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice.

Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.

“It was hard to believe at first; we thought it was a spike,” said Dr. Donald W. Patrick, executive director of the medical board and a neurosurgeon and lawyer. But Dr. Patrick said the trend — licenses up 18 percent since 2003, when the damage caps were enacted — has held, with an even sharper jump of 30 percent in the last fiscal year, compared with the year before.

“Doctors are coming to Texas because they sense a friendlier malpractice climate,” he said

And for those critics who might suggest that the reforms enacted in Texas simply attracted doctors who wanted to evade liability for their mistakes, the reality seems to be far different:

Of the 10,878 physicians licensed since 2003, she said, 14 have been the subject of disciplinary actions, on charges as diverse as addiction problems and record-keeping infractions, with none accused of harming patients.

14 out of 10,000 is a statistically insignificant number. And the fact that none of them have been accused of harming patients seems to suggest that the reforms that Texas enacted did not attract lower quality doctors as the critics of tort reform would probably suggest.