TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Florida Signals Doctors They're Not Wanted
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Published: May 6, 2008
If you were a doctor, would you move to Florida if you knew how this state treats your profession?
• Liability insurance is so costly (when available) that two out of three physicians in south Florida are uninsured. Florida statute requires an uninsured doctor to have $250,000 for a settlement to practice medicine in Florida while on staff at a hospital. If you do not have this you will lose your license.
• The Florida malpractice carriers have the ability to settle a case whether you agree with them or not and whether you did wrong or not.
• You are held personally liable for all monetary judgments over your practice liability limits unless you tell the insurance company to settle the case for the limits whether you did wrong or not. The average Florida case is for over $1 million today.
• The Florida Constitutional limits of $500,000 on non-economic (pain and suffering) damages are unconstitutional per circuit court. This appeal is now before the Florida Supreme Court.
• The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that an expert witness may testify based on their personal knowledge or experience and not based on the medically accepted norms in the field of their expertise.
• Florida is the only state in the union to have a "three strikes and you're out" constitutional amendment. This broadly interprets that should a Florida jury or arbitrator find you at fault for a malpractice event, you will be assigned a strike. This is retroactive, and incidents in other states count. After three strikes, your license will be permanently revoked.
• The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that all medical expert testimony, whether true or a complete lie is fully protected on the witness stand and granted absolute immunity ... expert perjury, libel, or slander is legal.
• All hospitals are required to have committees (such as peer review, infection control, patient safety data, clinical privileges, internal risk management, etc.) for the medical profession to constructively find opportunities for improvement. In the past these "hospital improvement committees" were protected from legal discovery so physicians were encouraged to speak up and seek the truth for the benefit of system improvement. It is now the position of the Florida Supreme Court that all these previously protected meetings, retroactively to the beginning of the hospital, shall be open to inspection, discovery and scrutiny. A physician can be drawn into legal liability just for participating in these required committees. Most lawyers advise physicians not to participate in their own hospital improvement committees.
Well, after all the personal sacrifice to become a doctor, and to be told of these facts by practice recruiters and hospital headhunters looking for doctors in other states, I would decide not to move to Florida.
What would you decide? I made a decision to move to Florida 23 years ago before all the rulings and amendments.
I will be retired in five years. Who will replace me I ask?
Jack Jawitz is a physician practicing in Sun City Center.
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