Medical Malpractice Litigation

For healthcare providers, there is no word that elicits as much frustration, fear and anger as much as the word “malpractice.” Medical malpractice is defined as any act or omission by a physician during treatment of a patient that deviates from accepted norms of practice in the medical community and causes an injury to the patient. Medical malpractice is a specific subset of tort law that deals with professional negligence. In order to prove that there was some type of negligence going on you must show that:
1. The plaintiff’s attorney must show that there was a breach of duty causing a lack of medical care that another healthcare professional would have used.
2. There must be an emotional, or physical injury caused by the medical professional.

First introduced by GA Republican Sen. Brandon Beach, SB 141, The Patient Compensation System he proposes that this bill would result in a 15%-22% reduction in insurance premiums. So what exactly is SB 141, The Patient Compensation System? This bill would create an administrative compensation system similar to worker’s compensation for the payment of medical malpractice claims. Many senators believe this bill would be harmful to the healthcare consumers for Georgia’s healthcare system because this bill will prevent an injured patient from seeking damages in a court of law. An additional administrative compensation system would deny injured patients access to courts of law, interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, and attempt to fix a non-existent

All malpractice cases must be brought through this new administration to even be considered for a case or monetary rewards. Instead of having their case heard by a jury of their peers in regular court of law regarding medical malpractice cases, injured patients would be at the mercy of people who were selected to be on a “panel”. Such a backwards system would not only deny both the patient and physician of their constitutional seventh amendment rights to a jury trial and to appeal, but its multilayered system would leave it open to corruption and sadly abuse. When you give a group of people small amount of power, power to decide if something is liable and worth monetary damages, they tend to abuse their power and hurt more people then they helped in the first place. Meanwhile, victims of non-medical Torts, such as battery and ordinary negligence, would still be able to pursue their claims in the court of law. A victim of a lawnmower accident who lost a foot would still have more rights than a patient who lost a whole leg due to a physician’s mistake. This is basically giving Georgia healthcare consumers the short end of the