Oklahoma Sees Drop in Medical Malpractice Claims But Not Rates

In the year since Gov. Brad Henry signed the Affordable Access to Health Care Act (Senate Bill 629), Oklahoma has seen fewer medical malpractice lawsuits, the Associated Press reported.

Between July 2003 and July 2004 the number of medical malpractice lawsuits decreased more than 60 percent in the eight counties that report such cases to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, according to Tony Laizure, president of the Oklahoma Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA).

In a Sept. 22, 2004, letter to Mukesh T. Parekh, M.D., president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA), Laizure stated, “In just one year after the passage of SB 629, the bill which required Plaintiff’s to obtain a report from an expert before filing a malpractice case, the number of cases filed has dropped in just eight counties from 756 to 297. That means in those 8 counties, 450 fewer cases were filed in the twelve months following enactment of SB 629.”

In the letter, which is posted on OTLA’s Web site, Laizure called upon Parekh to urge OSMA members to refrain from pushing for more tort reform measures in the next legislative session. In May 2004, Parekh and Laizure, along with representatives of Physicians Liability Insurance Company (PLICO), the Oklahoma Hospital Associa-tion and Hospital Casualty Company, signed a letter addressed to Gov. Henry agreeing to a six-year moratorium on tort and class action reform upon passage of House Bill 2661. HB 2661, a tort reform bill signed by the governor in late May, concerned the establishment of rates for attorneys in class action cases and the venues in which such cases may be filed and tried.

SB 629, the 2003 law, requires that each case be reviewed by an expert to determine whether negligence oc-curred. It also places a $300,000 cap on non-economic damages in certain medical liability cases.

Filed medical malpractice cases may have dropped over the year but rates for medical liability insurance reportedly have not followed suit. Medical liability insurer, NCMIC Insurance Company, filed a rate application in early August 2004 with the Oklahoma Insurance Depart-ment requesting a 23.3 percent rate increase, with an effective date of Oct. 1. Deputy Insurance Commissioner Daryl England scheduled a hearing on NCMIC’s request for Oct. 20.

PLICO, a subsidiary of the OSMA, and Hospital Casualty voluntarily went under state supervision last April. Together they account for nearly 72 percent of the medical liability premiums written in Oklahoma, according OID. Former Insur-ance Commissioner Carroll Fisher approved rate increases for the both companies in the months before they went under supervision, and on April 7 he approved a 105 percent rate increase for Ft. Wayne, Ind.-based Medical Protective Insurance Co., the state’s third largest writer of the coverage.

Topics Claims Oklahoma