Healthcare remains at the center of debate in Florida’s Capitol.
But while many people focus on the number of Floridians covered by some form of health insurance, equal attention should be paid to factors driving the costs of delivering healthcare.
These costs affect the insured, the uninsured, employers and the state.
If costs are reduced, healthcare becomes more accessible to all Floridians. We must therefore look at spending on the front end and develop an effective mechanism to contain costs while considering any state options for extending coverage to more people.
Currently in Florida, fear of medical litigation among physicians has manifested itself in the practice of defensive medicine. This means ordering unnecessary medical tests, procedures, medications and consultations — with little clinical or therapeutic value — to help physicians protect themselves from malpractice litigation.
The practice of defensive medicine costs Floridians more than $40 billion per year.The billions of dollars Florida loses each year due to unnecessary healthcare expenses is a hidden driver in the cost of healthcare, and, according to the Gallup Organization, accounts for as much as 26 percent of overall healthcare spending.
The dysfunctional, inefficient medical malpractice system is imposing an avoidable, onerous burden on a wide swath of Florida’s economy, affecting Florida’s physicians, patients and businesses.
A proposal called the Patients’ Compensation System is intended to transform the broken medical malpractice system in Florida and preserve the physician-patient relationship.
In essence, the proposal would remove medical malpractice from the inefficient court system and place it in a streamlined administrative system.
Rather than flooding courts with lawsuits that take years to resolve, the administrative model allows for a fair, less contentious and timely determination of any compensation that should be paid to an injured patient.
During a House Health and Human Services Committee meeting, Chair Jason Broduer (R-Sanford) revealed an improved version of the proposal.
He identified the legislation as a priority of his committee for the 2016 Legislative Session and a part of the solution to address the issue of escalating healthcare costs.
The newly designed Patients’ Compensation System — which responds to the valuable feedback from Florida’s physicians and other stakeholders — has these three key fundamental changes:
•It applies exclusively to physicians, as physicians are uniquely forced to practice defensive medicine.
•It significantly decreases the cost of medical malpractice coverage because physicians will no longer need to purchase professional liability insurance. Under the new proposal, an administrative fee will be determined based on the specialty practice of Florida physicians — with the fee being significantly lower than current medical malpractice rates.
•It will not increase reporting to the National Practitioner Database and Boards of Medicine.
Affordability extends to everyone across the healthcare spectrum — whether using private or public health insurance.
The Patients Compensation System would make Florida a national model for how to protect the physician-patient relationship while bringing down healthcare spending.
The new and improved Patients’ Compensation System will be filed in the 2016 Legislative Session and will be under review by Florida’s legislators.
Wayne W. Oliver is the executive director of Patient for Fair Compensation.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: OLIVER: Here's a proposal to address healthcare affordability