Excellent editorial in Boston Globe

[lbamdjd]

Here is a recent OpEd in the Globe:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2009/09/20/bay_state_where_expert_witness_is_often_a_misnomer/?comments=all

Bay State: where ‘expert witness’ is often a misnomer

September 20, 2009

I APPLAUD the Globe’s recognition that malpractice reform needs a
place at the health care reform table (“Malpractice reform can help
build a better health system,’’ Editorial, Sept. 13). However, with
numerous trial lawyers occupying positions in the Massachusetts
Legislature, the Bay State has been one the country’s least receptive
states toward this issue.

Under the current system, almost any doctor can testify as an
“expert’’ in a malpractice case regardless of actual expertise. This
system does not encourage the use of true medical authorities.

Instead, well-polished, hired-gun experts with extensive courtroom
experience travel the country providing glib testimony to sway
sympathetic juries in blockbuster cases. While these “experts’’ make
up only a small percentage of the doctors who testify, they are
conspicuously present in trials with jackpot jury awards.

To rectify this breach of justice, I was among several doctors who
approached committee leaders from the Legislature about the simplest
of malpractice reforms: standardization of expert witnesses.

Under our system, expert witnesses in medical malpractice cases would
have to be board certified and currently practicing medicine somewhere
in the United States in the same field as the defendant doctor.

Unfortunately, our proposal was met with polite but unequivocal “No,
thank yous.’’

If Massachusetts’ medical malpractice system cannot even tolerate
requiring that experts are actually experts, we have to wonder what
sort of reform the Globe’s editorial board has in mind.

Dr. Jim Greenberg
Weston

Coming from that state (where one would think qualified experts exist
in abundance) this apparently informed report is rather
disheartening.

Louise Andrew