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Fredericksburg-area doctors will put on their lab coats and march on the State Capitol next month to lobby for medical malpractice reform.
The Fredericksburg Area Medical Society has chartered a bus to take physicians to White Coat Day in Richmond on Feb. 4.
The doctors will attend General Assembly committee meetings and lobby state legislators.
The Medical Society of Virginia is sponsoring the event to build support for a package of bills, which would, among other changes, revise the cap on medical malpractice awards and limit attorneys' fees.
"Something has to be done. The system is broken," said Dr. Philip C. Casey, president of the Fredericksburg Area Medical Society.
Casey and other doctors argue that the cost and availability of liability insurance is driven by a flawed legal system that decides malpractice claims. The end result, they believe, is less medical care for patients.
But the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association says that the doctors have made the wrong diagnosis. The lawyers association supports the goal of lower insurance premiums and more access for patients, said Jack Harris, executive director. It disagrees with the doctors' prescription: changing the malpractice cap.
"It didn't work any of the other times they tried it. It won't work this time," Harris said.
There is little disagreement that physicians are having a hard time buying malpractice insurance and paying higher premiums when they can find it.
For example, Dr. James F. Hamilton and Dr. Mathew F. Vogel, the only obstetricians in the Northern Neck, have said they will end their practice March 1 if they are unable to renew their insurance coverage.
If so, they would join dozens of other Virginia obstetricians, including at least three in Fredericksburg, who have stopped delivering babies because of the rising cost of insurance premiums. Virginia is one of 13 states with a malpractice insurance crisis, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The emergency-room doctors and radiologists at Mary Washington Hospital found themselves in a similar position last year. They eventually purchased a liability policy that cost more than double the price of their old policy.
"It's happening all over the state," said Ann Hughes, director of legislative affairs for the Medical Society of Virginia.
In some localities, doctors have reacted to this crunch by retiring early, limiting their practices to lower-risk procedures or moving to areas where malpractice awards are more strictly limited.
"This is an issue that touches every physician no matter what your speciality," Casey said.
To solve the problem, the doctors are supporting a cap on the non-economic or "pain and suffering" portion of medical malpractice awards.
In Virginia, a person who has been injured because of medical malpractice can collect up to $1.7 million in damages. This total can include the reimbursement of actual and future expenses and a payment for "pain and suffering."
A bill proposed by Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr., R-Winchester, limits the non-economic damages within the cap to $500,000. Another bill by Sen. Stephen D. Newman, R-Lynchburg, sets a lower limit: $250,000.
Potts' bill also ends the annual increase in the malpractice cap. The cap has been raised each year since 2000, but the final increase would take place this year, according to the bill.
Another bill proposed by Newman limits the fees that attorneys can collect when they successfully represent a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case. The bill proposes a sliding scale that begins at 40 percent of the award and reduces to 15 percent as the award increases.
If this proposal had been in effect last year, when a Lake of the Woods man received a $500,000 malpractice award from a Fredericksburg Circuit Court jury, his attorney would have collected no more than $136,650.
Hughes said the Medical Society supports Newman's bills, but has backed annual increases in the cap.
"We feel it's important to honor the commitment that was made," Hughes said.
Hughes and Casey said these reforms will help ease the pressure on premiums. But the Trial Lawyers Association believes that premiums are more closely linked to the economic cycle and insurance companies' investment returns than to malpractice awards.
"They [doctors] are in denial about this," Harris said.
Harris said that Virginia experiences a malpractice insurance crisis about once a decade, and that the legislature responds each time by limiting awards. However, the changes have not stemmed the increase in premiums, he said.
"There just has to be a better way than taking away more rights of injured patients," Harris said.
To reach JIM HALL: 540/374-5433 jhall@freelancestar.com