Surgical Malpractice Lawsuits in Texas Decrease 80% After 2003 Tort Reforms

side note: California’s MICRA Act has been considered the gold standard of tort reform since 1975, but Texas’ 2003 medical liability tort reforms built on California’s law and upped the ante. And the results have been amazing. The article below purports that in the wake of the Lone Star State’s 2003 reforms, the number of surgical medical malpractice lawsuits have decreased by 80 percent at one of the state’s academic medical centers. That is a statistic that is impossible to ignore, and I argue that you will start seeing it be a major driver in media marketing from tort reform proponents.

According to the authors of a study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, the 2003 implementation of comprehensive tort reform in Texas has been associated with a nearly 80 percent decrease in the prevalence of surgical malpractice lawsuits at one of the state’s academic medical centers, and this decline in lawsuits resulted in a significant decrease in malpractice-associated costs.