Liability

An appeals court ruled correctly when it reversed a nearly $2 million judgment against a Cypress neurosurgeon, the Texas Medical Association is telling the Texas Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief.

Fifteen years later, the power of Texas' landmark tort reforms still shows up in both the numbers and the attitudes of physicians across the state.

Thanks to the Texas Supreme Court's decision in Perkins v. Skapek, physicians employed by a government institution still can perform clinical duties at a non-government facility without giving up immunity from lawsuits.

Physicians' liability insurance premiums have continued to drop since the passage of Proposition 12 and our landmark 2003 health care liability reforms. All major physician liability carriers in Texas have cut their rates by more than 30 percent. Texas physicians have seen their liability rates cut, on average, 46 percent. Cumulative liability cost savings since January 2004: $1.9 billion.

A Harris County district judge rejected a constitutional challenge to part of the Texas Advance Directives Act, siding with TMA and several other organizations that filed a brief in support of the law.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a Lubbock physician entangled in a question of whether Texas or New Mexico law should apply in a liability case involving care that was provided in Texas but for a New Mexico patient. 

The passage of House Bill 270 by the New Mexico Legislature allows Texas physicians to obtain a signed agreement from New Mexico patients stating that should they wish to file a lawsuit they will do so in Texas court. To assist physicians in taking advantage of the law's protections, TAPA has developed two forms, one for emergency treatment and one for voluntary treatment. 

Last month, TMA signed on to the Texas Alliance for Patient Access' (TAPA's) friend-of-the-court brief to support the application of the willful and wanton standard in a lawsuit involving emergency obstetrical care. TMA, TAPA, and other signatories contend emergency care provisions apply to medical care provided in an obstetrical unit without the pregnant patient first having been evaluated in a hospital's emergency department.

A doctor sued for negligence for a procedure he performed in Texas will have to defend himself under the law of … New Mexico? Right now, that's the situation in which Eldo Frezza, MD, finds himself. The bariatric surgeon faces several similar suits filed not in Texas, where he performed surgery on the patients, but in New Mexico, where the plaintiffs live.