Medical Malpractice Crisis in West Virginia
Seeing Jimmy Carter tonight at the convention reminds me of the line that Ronald Regan used so effectively against him, “There he goes again.” In West Virginia, the malpractice reform drum beat goes again, this time on the scanty information that the number of medical malpractice lawsuits filed in West Virginia is grew from130 in 2004 to 174 in 2007.
The reality is that 75 medical malpractice lawsuits have been filed in West Virginia through July of this year. At that pace, there will be less medical malpractice cases filed in West Virginia than there had been in years.
If doctors and malpractice reform advocates are going to beat the drum again, couldn’t they wait until there have something resembling evidence? As the Maryland Medical Malpractice Blog points out, random malpractice lawsuit filings are not a predictor of trends. In West Virginia, more than a third of the medical malpractice filings for the year were in July. Does this mean there will be 338 medical malpractice lawsuits filed over the course of the next year? Of course not.
