Tort reform in the works

ANNAPOLIS — Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday said his staff is drafting a medical-malpractice reform plan that will be reviewed by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch for a possible special session on the issue next month.

Mr. Ehrlich said he thinks he reached a consensus on the issue with the two Democratic leaders during an hourlong meeting at the Governor’s Mansion yesterday.

“At some point, in the next week or so, we will then have another meeting,” said Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican. “They will provide me with feedback with respect to that draft bill, and we will go from there.”

“We floated a few ideas,” Mr. Miller of Prince George’s County said yesterday. “My prediction is that there will be a special session … [but first, the governor] has to sell the idea to the tops.”

The governor said the bill will address providing immediate relief for doctors from escalating malpractice-insurance premiums, which are scheduled to rise by more than 30 percent by year’s end.

To become effective, the bill — which could include a state bailout to help defray the cost of a rate freeze for insurance companies — would have to clear the same Senate committee that this year killed Mr. Ehrlich’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, which would have allowed a defendant in a malpractice lawsuit to offer a settlement.

“If you go and look at the administration’s bill last year and look at the House bill, you will see a lot of common agreement, a lot of common support,” the governor said. “The issue obviously has been the Senate and the Senate committee.”

Mr. Miller, a trial lawyer who has backed the governor on slot-machine gambling, helped kill the Ehrlich medical-malpractice proposal, saying the issue needs more study.

Mr. Busch, an Anne Arundel County employee who has blocked Mr. Ehrlich’s slots bill, has supported the governor’smalpractice-reform plans.

“We will take a look at [the bill and] add, delete, make suggestions,” said Mr. Busch, who visited doctors in Baltimore yesterday, “hopefully come to some type of agreement.”

Mr. Ehrlich, a lawyer with a background in tort defense, set up in June a task force of more than 20 lawmakers, doctors, lawyers, insurers and others to look into resolving the state’s rising malpractice-insurance costs. He said the group’s preliminary findings will be included in the bill, which probably will not include capping jury awards.

“The cap issue is one element under the category of legal reform,” he said. “There are literally two dozen elements under discussion.”

The governor did not disclose what the state may use as a funding source for the bill.

“Right now, today, I am not going to speculate as to the funding source,” said Mr. Ehrlich, who has opposed implementing new taxes.

Last month, the state approved a 33 percent increase in malpractice premiums for next year. The rate increase follows a 10 percent increase two years ago and a 28 percent increase last year.

The new increases mean that some doctors will pay at least $150,000 a year for malpractice insurance.

Maryland State Medical Society, the state’s largest association of doctors, last week said that as many as 40 percent of its physicians will close their practices or leave the state if lawmakers do not address rising costs brought on by increasing malpractice premiums.

Last week, about 100 surgeons at Prince George’s Hospital Center — frustrated about the rising premiums — announced they would stop performing nonemergency surgeries beginning Nov. 15.

Their decision followed an announcement by doctors in the Washington County Hospital Association in Western Maryland that they would delay their plan to halt nonemergency procedures.