By Matt Gracey The Florida legislature will decide this year about a new proposal from a group in Georgia that is trying to eliminate the tort system for medical-malpractice cases.  They propose to create what they describe as a system similar to but operationally different than our workers’ compensation system.  They are luring doctors into

By Matt Gracey No matter the election results, one of the political “no-brainers” of 2012 and on seems to be the continued push of the government to combat Medicare fraud.  After some 30 years of crunching a wealth of internal data, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has extensively analyzed outcome numbers and

By Robert E. White, Jr., Sr. Vice President, Regional Operating Officer The Doctors Company/FPIC Yet another large verdict has been rendered against a bare Florida doctor. Most recently, in September 2011, a jury found an OB/GYN and his professional association responsible for failing to detect physical disabilities of a child before it was born and

By Matt Gracey Often in medicine’s tort-reform efforts, we get so focused on the politics of changing unfair laws that we lose sight of the low-hanging fruit.  How many dollars have gone into trying to convince the politicians to limit the number of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals?  How much progress have we really made,

By Matt Gracey Already we are seeing doctors either sell out to hospitals or join mega groups. Many of those hospitals’ doctors enjoy sovereign immunity, as do VA doctors and many other public hospital doctors. Many of the mega groups, at least in South Florida, do not require or even encourage their doctors to be

By: Matt Gracey Many doctors’ employment contracts require malpractice-insurance-policy “tails” to be purchased so as to effectively turn a claims-made policy into a more desirable occurrence form of? coverage. In the last year, for the first time ever, a healthy market for optional stand-alone tail policies has developed. Instead of only being able to purchase

By: Matt Gracey Many doctors’ employment contracts require malpractice-insurance-policy “tails” to be purchased so as to effectively turn a claims-made policy into a more desirable occurrence form of? coverage. In the last year, for the first time ever, a healthy market for optional stand-alone tail policies has developed. Instead of only being able to purchase

  By Matt Gracey Florida doctors are now enjoying a very “soft” buyer-centered market cycle, although I believe this is close to ending.  Back in 2000 we were in a similar market cycle, which led to many insurers pulling out of the state and the others dramatically increasing their malpractice-insurance rates a year or two

By Matt Gracey The market cycle for malpractice insurance in Florida has fairly predictable cycles, with extreme fluctuations in pricing and insurers’ underwriting. For example, the late 1990s and early 2000s were similar to market cycle we are presently in, which is the last bit of a “soft”, doctor-friendly section. As insurers lowered their rates

 By: Matt Gracey The claims exposure for doctors going into nursing homes is much higher than for their normal practice, so most malpractice insurance policies specifically exclude coverage for this exposure. Exceptions are sometimes made in the policy to cover you going into nursing homes specifically to see your own patients, and for very limited