Malpractice lawsuits decline in Pa.

In 2009, the number of new medical-malpractice lawsuits filed in Pennsylvania courts fell for the fifth straight year, according to a report released Tuesday by Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille.

The report provides new evidence that the malpractice climate in Pennsylvania has cooled since the early part of the decade, when rising costs led many doctors and hospital administrators to worry that the state's medical system might collapse.

Philadelphia - long considered the center of the state's malpractice crisis because of the large number of generous verdicts here - saw the most dramatic declines in new suits and in large jury awards, as well as a rise in defense verdicts.

Groups representing the state's doctors and hospitals reacted positively.

"The data continue the positive trend of reductions in the number of medical-liability lawsuit filings statewide as the result of the reforms adopted in 2002," said Roger Baumgarten, spokesman of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

The number of new malpractice suits in 2009 fell to 1,533 from 1,602 cases initiated in 2008. That marked a 47 percent decline from the 2,904 suits filed in 2002.

And in Philadelphia, new malpractice suits fell even more dramatically to 491 from 1,365 in 2002 - a 64 percent drop.

Moreover, doctors and hospitals who took cases to trial in 2009 did well, winning 85 percent of the cases statewide and 79 percent in Philadelphia. That compared with defense-victory rates of 73 percent statewide and 59 percent in Philadelphia from 2000 through 2003.

Of the 154 cases that resulted in jury verdicts last year, 12 resulted in awards of $1 million or more, including one Allegheny County award for between $5 million and $10 million.

In the first four years of the decade, the state had 119 verdicts of more than $1 million, including 14 verdicts of more than $10 million. Nine of those were in Philadelphia.

In 2002, the state legislature passed Act 13, a measure aimed at limiting the number of medical-malpractice suits and reducing medical errors.

In 2003, the state Supreme Court ordered that medical-malpractice lawsuits be filed in the county where the alleged injury occurred. The court also required that plaintiffs obtain a so-called certificate of merit from a doctor, saying that negligence occurred.

"In the recent health-care debate nationally, there is an insistent call for reform of the handling of medical-malpractice cases," said Chief Justice Castille. He added that "the report showed Pennsylvania is far ahead of the nation and individual states in this arena."

"The fact is that they have made some good changes and, as the data shows, the number of claims being filed is down," said Charles Moran, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Medical Society, which represents doctors. "That is a good sign. Something must be working."