News: Medical Malpractice Insurance and Physician Practices

side note: Found this over at KevinMD’s blog and thought that I should re-post this because all Cunningham Group website visitors should be aware of these. With the explosion of smart phone sales, and the increased awareness of EMR/EHR…these types of apps have become increasingly important to physicians who want to use technology to better….and sometimes complicate their lives.

by Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi, MD, and Satish Misra

If you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health care related field, trying to find the best free medical apps for the iPhone is a hassle.

Apps such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate the Top Free Medical Apps list in the App Store. Our top 10 iPhone medical apps list contains no such app, and this isn’t a re-hash of the top downloaded free medical apps either. Rather, this list contains the top 10 free iPhone apps health care professionals and students can actually use on a day to day basis.

1) Medscape
We mentioned this app when it was released in the summer of 2009. At the time I doubt many thought it would ever eclipse Epocrates in the top free medical apps section of the App Store, but with significant recent updates it’s accomplished this feat.

This app always had a great drug reference section, with over 6,000 generic, brand, and OTC drugs, along with a drug interaction checker. But with recent updates, Medscape now has a Diseases and Conditions section, along with a Clinical Procedures section. These added sections aren’t just fluff, they actually contain concise and useful information, with videos and pictures to boot. We plan on doing a full review in the near future.

Cost: Free

2) Epocrates
The free version of Medscape might be ranked higher on our list, and in the App Store, but I guarantee almost every medical professional still has at least the free version of Epocrates. My peers and I often joke about how Epocrates is the “most trusted name in Medicine” – because it’s the one app med schools and medical institutions aren’t afraid of pushing.

The free version, called Epocrates Rx, includes: Drug interactions, Pill Identifier, Drug Info, and Medical Calculator. Surprisingly, Medscape doesn’t have a medical calculator, you would think this added functionality would be easy to do. In our review of Epocrates, we go over all the different versions in details, along with pricing – we were definitely impressed.

Cost: Free

3) iRadiology
This app is a must download if you’re a resident or a medical student. Even if you’re not in that category, you might want to download this app just for fun. iRadiology has a catalog of over 500 radiology cases designed to help medical students and residents improve their plain film, CT, and MRI reading skills.

The cases are derived from Dr. Gillian Lieberman, who is currently the Director of Harvard Medical Student training and Associate Director of the Residency Program at Beth Israel Medical Center. We interviewed her when iRadiology was released – and she provided some great insight into the inspiration for the app.

Cost: Free

4) MedPage Today Mobile
What’s not to like about MedPage Today? The website is a fantastic resource for medical professionals, and a lot of the content is in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine – further securing its academic credentials. Their motto is, “Putting Breaking Medical News Into Practice”, and this app helps you with this cause via mobile access.

In addition, you can get audio and video through this app, allowing you to get CME credits while using MedPage Today mobile. With the most recent update, MedPage Today mobile now allows you to do a full text search of all articles published on their website since 1/1/07, definitely a welcome addition.

Cost: Free

5) Medical Radio
This is a product of ReachMD, probably most famous for its XM Satellite Radio broadcast feeds (XM 160) of medical information – and these feeds are available live through this app. MedicalRadio allows you to keep up to date with changing clinical guidelines, and I’ve found the medical talks to be informative and useful.

We haven’t done a full review of this app, but the original iteration of this app, ReachMD CME, made it into our old top medical apps list.

Cost: Free

6) MedCalc
We’ve always been fans of MedCalc, now the most popular free medical calculator in the App Store. There’s not much to say about it, other than it’s created by physicians who are dedicated to keeping it as a free resource for medical professionals. Also, don’t forget Epocrates Rx (free) has a great medical calculator built.

Cost: Free

7) NeuroMind
NeuroMind is one of the two medical apps on this list that we haven’t reviewed on iMedicalApps. Its a great tool for medical students, neurology residents, and even neurosurgeons. It contains a wide range of information, from basic neuro-anatomy to the WHO Safe Surgery checklist items.

Cost: Free

8. Drug trials
Drug Trials is an app we featured on one of our “recently released free medical apps” list. If you find yourself using clinicaltrials.gov, then this is a great app to have. It’s packed with features such as eligibility criteria, e-mail out functionality, and it can even use Google Maps to show the location of the trial!

We reviewed another similar app awhile back, Clinical Trials, but Drug Trials is just as good or slightly better. And unlike Clinical Trials ($7.99), this one is free.

Cost: Free

9) Eponyms (for students)
Webster’s definition of Eponym is: one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named. In medicine, we encounter this all the time when memorizing obscure diseases or pathologies. This app contains over 1700 of these medical eponyms with short descriptions of each – a nice learning tool for students.

Note, this is the “student” version of the app. If you’re no longer a student the developers ask you to download the $1.99 version of the app – and it contains the same content.

Cost: Free

10) MSK Radiology Teaching File – LITE
This was another app we featured on one of our regular columns, “recently released free medical apps”. MSK Radiology is the lite version of Radiopaedia.org’s Radiology Teaching Files: Volume 3, an app designed to teach radiology. Although this is a lite version, I was surprised to find out how much information it packs in 10 full cases.

This lite version comes included with some relatively common pathologies and even though it’s free, you could definitely get some good learning accomplished if you’re a resident or a medical student. There are other LITE versions of Radiopaedia.org’s content with similar formats. Usually I wouldn’t include a LITE version of an application in this list of free medical apps, but this app had plenty of content. Also, if you find the cases useful the full cost is $4.99 for each set of 50 cases, not a bad price.

Cost: Free

Conclusion:
So there you have it, the top 10 free medical apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch that are actually useful to medical professionals. We’ve reviewed 8 out of 10 of these apps, and I encourage you to look at our full catalog of reviews, where we’ve reviewed a diverse group of apps with various price ranges.

Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi, and Satish Misra blog at iMedicalApps.com.

We here at Cunningham Group were extremely disappointed that trial lawyers got their way in Illinois and were able to strike down the 2005 Tort Reform legislation put into place to help with the absurd insurance rates physicians have to pay for their professional medical liability. A new study conducted by the consulting firm Millman Inc said that costs are likely to jump 18% now that the Illinois State Supreme Court ruled that the tort reform legislation limiting jury payouts is unconstitutional.

From a recent Crains article:

The consulting firm said the recent removal of caps on malpractice awards would lead to higher costs per malpractice claim, on average. The number of people suing their doctors also is likely to rise, the firm said.

“The magnitude of the estimated increase is largely a reflection of the tort environment in Illinois,” Chad Karls, a principal at Seattle-based Milliman, said in a statement. “In Illinois, claim severities have been among the highest in the country.”

Here is a video explaining the background of the Tort Reform put into place in 2005, and what one of the new med-mal insurance companies who recently entered Illinois, because there was Tort Reform in place, Medicus, had to say about the state’s environment:

Since 1947, Cunningham Group’s main priority has been to find the lowest medical malpractice insurance prices for physicians in Illinois and across the nation. Please click above and we will get you quotes from every malpractice insurance carrier, so you be assured that you are paying the absolute lowest price.

The Illinois Supreme Court recently ruled that limitations on non-economic damages in med-mal lawsuits was unconstitutional. This has set in motion a huge PR campaign by all sides involved to cement their stance on the issue. The Illinois Department of Insurance< just made theirs known.

Their latest news release shows that since 2005, there has been a 10% decrease in premiums paid towards professional medical liability insurance. They mention in the news release the following information that helped lower costs for physicians, doctors and other health care professionals:

* A decrease in medical malpractice premiums. Gross premium paid to medical malpractice insurers has declined from $606,355,892 in 2005 to $541,278,548 in 2008;
* An increase in competition among companies offering medical malpractice insurance. In 2008, 19 companies offering coverage to physicians/surgeons each collected more than $500,000 in premiums, an increase from 14 such companies in 2005; and
* The entry into Illinois of new companies offering medical malpractice insurance. In 2008, five companies collected more than $22,000,000 in combined physicians/surgeons premiums – and at least $1,000,000 each in premiums – that did not offermedical malpractice insurance in 2005.

They “encourage” the insurers to do the following:

* Timely respond to Department requests for additional information necessary to determine the manner in which rates are set and the reasonableness of those rates;
* Continue offering insureds quarterly premium payment options;
* Continue offering insureds policies that contain deductibles;
* Continue to submit rate and rule filings to the Department prior to the effective date of the proposed change;
* Continue to offer discounts to insureds who agree to participate in risk management practices; and
* Provide the Department with 180 days notice before discontinuing the writing of insurance in Illinois.

* The insurer’s base rates and a list of available insurance agents; and
* Additional loss, claims, exposure, and expense data as well as company-produced studies of reserves supporting Illinois medical malpractice business and company surplus.

We encourage all Illinois Physicians to request a free medical malpractice insurance quote and make sure your rates are locked in for the next year.

A quick overview of the difference between Claims Made and Occurrence. Click here to get your free Professional Medical Liability Insurance Quote.

side note: We pride ourselves on being advocates for Physicians and were displeased to see the personal trial lawyers of Illinois get handed a victory by the state’s Supreme Court. This will probably lead to more frivolous lawsuits against good physicians. The tort reform bill signed into law in 2005 had kept rates from rising and allowed physicians and other health care professionals to continue to practice without the fear of astronomical rates. Once again….we’re back to the drawing board. We are encouraging all Illinois Physicians to contact their Med-Mal providers, you can contact us here, and get a quote and lock in their rates.

By KEVIN SACK
The New York Times

In a case that could resonate in Washington, the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the state’s five-year-old medical malpractice law because it limited compensation to injured patients for pain, suffering and other non-economic harms.

The ruling came down as federal proposals to cap malpractice awards are receiving fresh attention on Capitol Hill. Republicans enthusiastically support the limits, and they are seen as a potential vehicle for restarting the stalled health care negotiations in Congress with bipartisan impetus. Neither the House bill that Democrats passed late last year nor its Senate counterpart included significant changes to medical malpractice regulations.

In a 4-to-2 ruling, the Illinois court wrote that the legislature, in enacting the 2005 law, violated the state Constitution’s separation of powers clause by imposing decisions that should be reserved for judges and juries. The law established caps of $500,000 for non-economic damages in verdicts against doctors and $1 million in cases against hospitals.

The decision armed opponents of such provisions with fresh ammunition, and held a particular sting for the American Medical Association, which has its headquarters in Chicago.

CONTINUE READING ARTICLE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

by Matt Burns
http://www.bizjournals.com

Medical malpractice claims and insurance rates fell again in Ohio in 2007, but the state’s top insurance official isn’t calling a win just yet for tort reform legislation that took effect in 2003.

The Ohio Department of Insurance’s third annual report on professional liability claims shows 3,451 claims closed in 2007, the latest year for which statistics were available. That’s down 14 percent from 4,004 claims in 2006, a year that saw closed claims drop more than 20 percent from the year before. Read the rest of this entry »

By Shari Rudavsky
http://www.indystar.com

Health clinics located in retail businesses would be subject to greater state scrutiny, have to install separate entrances and train all staff in cardiopulmonary resuscitation under proposed legislation that aims to set new standards for the facilities.

Among other measures, the state Senate bill also would mandate that a patient’s primary-care physician receive a detailed report of the clinic visit and that prices be displayed outside the clinic’s exam room. Read the rest of this entry »

By Allison Berry / Staff Writer
http://www.dailynexus.com

Due to an editing error, this article originally stated that the Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, UCLA and UCSD medical schools are considering increasing enrollment next year. In actuality, the schools just participated in a survey on the matter. The Nexus regrets the error.

Several prominent medical schools have reported plans to increase enrollment next year in order to meet the nation’s ballooning demand for doctors.

According to a Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions survey, 44 percent of the 85 medical schools surveyed said they have considered sending out a greater number of acceptance letters for the 2009 -‘10 academic year. Additionally, one-third of the schools said they were planning to increase their class size by 5 to 15 percent. Read the rest of this entry »