Posts tagged "California"

The American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF) issued its 2021/2022 Judicial Hellholes report late last year in December. The annual release documents abuses of the civil justice system in jurisdictions the pro-tort reform group says are among the most unfair and out of balance in the nation. The ATRF is a branch of the American Tort […]

A California hospitalist who had his hospital privileges rescinded in 2015 for alleged substandard performance and inadequate record-keeping filed a civil action last month asking a federal court to reinstate those privileges. The action alleges a lack of due process during medical disciplinary hearings violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In the case […]

Dr. Samuel Smith, a psychiatrist in California, contacted me on a recent Monday in a bit of a rush. He was joining a new medical group the following week and they were trying to add him to their group’s medical malpractice insurance policy with their standard carrier. However, the medical malpractice carrier denied him coverage […]

Since 1975, California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) has been the golden standard of medical liability tort reforms. Signed into law during the nation’s first medical malpractice insurance premium crisis, MICRA instituted a cap of $250,000 on non-economic (pain-and-suffering) damages, capped the percentage of an award available for attorney fees, shortened the statute of […]

On June 11, the California Department of Insurance announced that it was flexing its rate regulation authority by mandating the state’s largest insurer of medical liability decrease its California medical malpractice insurance rates by an average of 10 percent. The Doctors Company now joins MIEC, MedPro, NORCAL Mutual, The Dentists Insurance Company and NCMIC in […]

A recently released study of all medical malpractice payments made in 2011 indicates that six states accounted for more than half of all medical malpractice indemnifications. The analyzed data came from the National Practitioner Data Bank That is an astonishing statistic. Which six states accounted for more than half of all medical malpractice indemnity payments […]

California insurance commissioner Dave Jones recently mandated lower rates for medical professional liability insurance offered by NORCAL Mutual Insurance, the Dentists Insurance Company and the MIEC Physicians & Surgeons program. Last year, Jones asked California’s top six medical malpractice insurance companies to submit rate filings to the Department of Insurance and justify their current rates. […]

side note: Today’s healthcare industry is increasingly dependent on computers and data sharing via the internet or an intranet system. Add to this the increasingly common use of social networking services, like Facebook, as a means of marketing a medical practice to potential patient customers. This evolution toward cyber-dependency has been accelerated by the Patient […]

side note: California has long been on the cutting edge of medical liability tort reform. It was the first state in the nation to institute a cap on non-economic damages with the 1975 Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) of 1975. The cap helped California stabilize liability costs, particularly for specialty and high-risk services such […]