Things You Need to Know about Iowa’s Proposed Medical Malpractice Reforms

Iowa was in the news recently with proposals that it adopt a “certificate of merit” system and that it cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Under a “certificate of merit” system, a medical expert would have to review a potential medical malpractice case to determine whether the plaintiff’s injuries were caused by the negligent care of a healthcare provider.  The  verdict cap would limit non-economic damages, which are often crucial to ensuring plaintiffs get a just recovery.  

The stated purpose of these proposed reforms is to help Iowa attract additional physicians. Under this logic, “frivolous lawsuits are harming our ability to recruit and retain doctors.” 

This is simply incorrect. To begin with, much of Iowa’s physician shortage is really a byproduct of the fact that Iowa is a rural state with few major population centers. Efforts to make it more difficult to bring meritorious medical malpractice cases to trial will not change the reality that it’s hard to encourage physicians to practice in rural areas far away from major population centers. 

These proposals also fail to recognize that Iowa is already a challenging environment for plaintiffs who bring medical malpractice litigation. In Iowa, the statutory 180 day expert witness disclosure rule, along with the reality of how costly it is for a plaintiff to successfully litigate a medical malpractice case, means most plaintiff’s attorneys usually have a case reviewed by an expert witness prior to filing. This allows plaintiff’s attorneys to avoid filing cases that are unlikely to result in a satisfactory recovery for the plaintiff. As such, common practice already results in an informal “certificate of merit” approach anyway. 

In fact, this environment not only discourages the filing of “frivolous” cases, but also many meritorious claims where the costs of litigation discourage filing claims. The end result of these circumstances can be seen in the significant decline in the number of medical malpractice cases filed in Iowa in the past decade, where 335 cases were filed in 2002 and only 187 in 2011.  

These proposals also don’t take into account that such reforms simply don’t achieve their states goals. As Brad Lint, executive director of the Iowa Association for Justice noted, the “certificate of merit proposal would drive up litigation costs for plaintiffs and defendants alike, and make it much more difficult for seriously injured patients to pursue their claims in court.” Lint went on to note that in states that have enacted verdict caps, “Health insurance premiums didn’t go down, doctors didn’t save money on their liability insurance, but insurance company profits shot through the roof.”  

Given these factors, at Hayes Lorenzen Lawyers we feel that these proposals should be a non-starter with the state legislature. We also concur with the Quad City Times that such proposals “would be legislative overreach.Iowa has not experienced runaway medical malpractice judgments. We’re much more comfortable with laws that leave judicial matters to jurors and judges who hear facts unique to each case, rather than having legislators make up an arbitrary cap.” 

In the coming weeks and months this blog will provide additional posts that hopefully will add some clarity and context to the debate about the prior-mentioned reforms.