May 7, 2024 by matray

Below are some headlines and article synopses from the May 2024 issue of Medical Liability Monitor. To read the articles in their entirety, please subscribe today.

Colorado Considers Raising Noneconomic Damage Cap To Save It
The Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee last month approved by a four-to-one vote Senate Bill 24-130 (SB-130), legislation that would incrementally increase the state’s $300,000 cap on noneconomic damages to $500,000 over the course of five years. The bill must now clear the full Senate and the House before the legislative session concludes on May 8. Supported by the Colorado Medical Society, the state’s largest insurer of physician liability COPIC Insurance Co., and other key physician and patient advocates, SB-130 is similar to the approach taken by California in 2022 when an initiative to remove the state’s medical liability noneconomic damage cap qualified for the electoral ballot. In response, legislators brokered a compromise between healthcare, legal and consumer advocates to increase the state’s noneconomic damage cap legislatively and incrementally from $250,000 to $500,000 …

Congress Likely to Kick the Can on Covid-Era Telehealth Policies
Federal lawmakers face a year-end deadline to solidify or scuttle an array of COVID-era payment changes for telehealth services that include allowing people to stay in their homes to see a doctor or therapist. Most of the proposals focus on how Medicare covers telehealth services. But the rules affect patients on all types of insurance plans because typically private insurers and some government programs follow Medicare’s example. Without congressional action, virtual healthcare services like audio-only calls or online meetings with specialty doctors — such as an occupational therapist — could end. The bills would also continue to allow rural health clinics and other health centers to offer telehealth services while waiving a requirement for in-person mental health visits …

New Kentucky law Protects Healthcare Workers from Criminal Prosecution of Medical Mistakes
Kentucky recently passed a law shielding healthcare providers from criminal liability for any “harm or damages” alleged to have occurred from “an act or omission relating to the provision of health services.” House Bill (HB) 159 — which received unanimous support from the commonwealth’s House and Senate — protects physicians, nurses and other medical staff from criminal prosecution for medical mistakes made in good faith as they navigate patient care situations. The bill was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear on March 26 …

Physicians Fight to Keep Practices Afloat After ‘Change’ Cyberattack
The American Medical Association (AMA) last month published results from an informal survey that illuminates the ongoing, devastating impact of the February 21 cyberattack against Change Healthcare — a unit of UnitedHealthcare Group (UHG) — on physician practices across the country. And according to survey respondents, the fallout has serious implications for the survival of independent medical practices and patient care …

Study Challenges Common Assumption on Rising Maternal Mortality, AMA Lobbies for Changes
The U.S. maternal mortality rate is accelerating at an alarming rate, according to a new study from Northwestern Medicine. And it’s not because Americans are getting pregnant at older ages. The study discovered that maternal mortality increased among every age group — with the greatest relative increases among pregnant people aged 25-29 and 30-34 years old …

Senate Investigating Whether Emergency Care Harmed by Private Equity
U.S. Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, last month requested information from four emergency department staffing firms — and the three private equity companies that own them — about their business practices and how those practices impact patient care. In letters to Blackstone, KKR and Apollo Global Management and their respective staffing firms TeamHealth, Envision Healthcare, US Acute Care Solutions and Lifepoint Health, Peters requested information about business operations, staffing decisions, and patient care and safety at several emergency departments across the country …

Patients’ Health at Risk as Insurers Deny, Delay Vital Treatments
To curb healthcare costs and block unnecessary services, insurers have long required doctors to obtain their approval before they’ll pay for certain drugs, treatments and procedures. But in recent years, insurers have ratcheted up their use of prior authorization, causing delays and denials of care that are harming or even killing people, many doctors and patients say …

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