Lawsuit reform has dramatically improved the fairness and efficiency of Texas’ civil justice system. Just a few years ago, the Lone Star State held a position near the bottom of state rankings and was frequently a source of derision in the national media. Objective studies now place the state’s civil justice system in the upper tier relative to many measures (though some challenges remain). This notable turnaround, from a legal system that was poorly regarded in several areas to one that is widely recognized as an effective model worthy of emulation, has brought substantial benefits.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Texas was known for the lack of fairness and balance in its civil justice system. The distortions caused by these problems significantly eroded the state’s competitive position. Fears of excessive litigation and outsized claims were a substantial disincentive for potential corporate locations and expansions.

In February 1995, The Wall Street Journal called national attention to the civil litigation environment in Texas, and the state became infamous as the “Wild West of Lawsuits.” Even internationally, Texas was recognized as a paradise for plaintiffs. The London Observer reported that businesses in Texas should consider moving elsewhere to avoid the problems of the state’s civil justice system.

The threat of litigation can significantly decrease product innovation. When businesses operate in a high-liability-risk environment, they respond by reducing investments in product innovation because new products have more uncertain safety characteristics and can leave them vulnerable to lawsuits.

Another vulnerable sector is health care delivery. Prior to tort reform, medical malpractice premiums were extremely high, discouraging some doctors from continuing to practice or to perform certain procedures. An increase in “defensive medicine” (when doctors’ decisions to order tests, avoid procedures, or suggest treatments based in part on a fear of legal liability) was also a problem. In addition, the supply of doctors tends to be restricted by the higher risk and costs associated with an excessive system, thus further reducing access to health care.

My firm, The Perryman Group, has studied the issue of tort reform in Texas and other states on numerous occasions and has consistently found that the misallocations of scarce societal assets lead to (1) a loss of economic efficiency; (2) increased risks of doing business; (3) cost increases unrelated to productivity; (4) escalating insurance rates, particularly in specific areas such as medical malpractice; and (5) other problems.

In a recent study, we developed an extensive and comprehensive assessment process to measure the incremental gains from civil justice reforms. We looked at factors such as cost savings (administrative costs, court costs, non-productive expenditures to avoid or take advantage of excessive litigation reward opportunities, and the inefficiencies in the redistribution process); gains from safer products (in terms of people in the workforce who otherwise would have died from faulty products); and benefits of new products and manufacturing in Texas stemming from research, development, and innovation in a less litigious environment.
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Neurosurgeons incur some of the highest annual malpractice premiums of any specialty, averaging more than $100,000 and as high as $300,000 per year in some states. Research analyzes a correlation between numbers of practicing and retiring neurosurgeons and the malpractice environment of each state.

Newswise — While the medical malpractice system in the United States can provide remediation for negligent medical care, its overzealous application can have devastating effects on practicing surgeons, and inevitably hurt patient care by limiting the scope of care available to the general population.

There are currently an estimated 3,229 active neurosurgeons in the United States certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgeons (ABNS). This corresponds to approximately one neurosurgeon for every 100,000 people in the United States. Neurosurgeons incur some of the highest annual malpractice premiums of any specialty, averaging more than $100,000 and as high as $300,000 per year in some states. In 2005 alone, neurosurgeons paid a total of $28 million in malpractice claims, with the highest average payment per specialist surgeon ($465,000), and the single highest payment of any claim in any specialty ($5.6 million).
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Prostate cancer is the most common — and second-deadliest — cancer for men.
Yet, doctors can’t agree on the best way to diagnose the disease, let alone treat it.

Stop putting off prostate exam Prostate survivor urges other blacks: Get screened How the Sun-Times’ prostate test saved his life Where to find: Free prostate screenings

In fact, the PSA test remains one of the most controversial screening tests in medicine, even though it has been around for more than 20 years.

The test measures the level of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in the blood. High levels of PSA can be a sign of prostate cancer.

But critics say that because of the test’s limitations, it can lead men to get unnecessary treatment that can have serious side-effects, including incontinence and impotence.
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Researchers are reporting that they have developed a new way to help doctors and parents make some of the most agonizing decisions in medicine, about how much treatment to give tiny, extremely premature infants.

These are infants at the edge of viability, weighing less than 2.2 pounds and born after 22 to 25 weeks of pregnancy, far ahead of the normal 40 weeks. About 40,000 babies a year are born at this very early stage in the United States.

The new method uses an online calculator developed for such cases factoring in traits like birth weight and sex and generating statistics on chances of the baby’s survival and the likelihood of disabilities (www.nichd.nih.gov/neonatalestimates).

The statistics are not a personal prediction. They estimate risk based on data from similar infants in a large study being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Certain factors gave babies an advantage. At any given gestational age, they were more likely to survive and escape serious disability if they weighed more than others, if they were singletons rather than twins or multiples or if their mothers had been given steroids before birth to help the fetal lungs to mature.

Girls also fared better than boys of the same age, a factor doctors have known a long time without being able to explain.
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Walk into one of St. Joseph Health System’s Kentucky hospitals in the next few weeks and you’re likely to see something that resembles a tall, skinny version of R2D2 strolling, or rather rolling, down the hall, on its way to visit patients.

Robots are stepping out of the pages of science fiction novels and into the middle of modern-day medicine.

Doctors and nurses at St. Joseph East in Lexington are starting to train with one of the robots now, as are staffers at St. Joseph hospitals in Bardstown, Berea, London, Martin and Mount Sterling. St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington will get one next, though the robots won’t actually start “seeing” patients until sometime in May, officials said Monday.

St. Joseph officials stress that the new robots, developed by California-based InTouch Health, won’t actually dispense any medicines or perform any medical procedures. But they will give doctors extra sets of eyes and ears to help keep track of patients and their medical needs.

Each St. Joseph robot weighs about 200 pounds, stands 51/2 feet tall, and rolls silently along on three wheels. Each boasts a video screen instead of a face; real-time video cameras and microphones instead of eyes and ears; and hook-ups for various medical devices, such as stethoscopes or ultrasound sensors.

Doctor, patient can talk

St. Joseph officials say that, when the system is fully operational, a specialist in Lexington will be able to do a consultation on a patient many miles away at, say, St Joseph London, “seeing” the patient through real-time pictures transmitted from the robot’s video camera “eyes” to the specialist’s laptop via a wireless broadband connection. Patient and specialist will be able to talk with each other, and the specialist will be able to check the patient’s pulse, do a medical scan, or consult with the patient’s doctor in London.

The specialist will even be able to use a computer joy stick to navigate the robot around the patient’s room, or direct it to another patient’s room — all from his or her own computer. A doctor at home after hours could even contact the robot at the hospital from his laptop and “send” it to check on patients in the hospital, officials say.
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