I would like to thank the Journal and the guest contributors for putting this history into words. I was in medical school during this time and never knew the full context and struggles our colleagues and predecessors faced on the issue of medical liability in Mississippi. Standing on the shoulders of the physicians in MSMA, physicians practicing today may have difficulty understanding both the emotional and financial strain of practicing medicine without tort reform.
I hope everyone has a chance to read through the articles to see the perspectives of many of the key players in the events in 2002 and 2004. Share these recollections with your practice partners, medical students, and patients to show the importance of healthcare advocacy through organized medicine.
The articles detail the climate of rising malpractice costs, jury verdicts threatening personal assets of physicians, and the closing of medical practices, which had the effect of limiting or even eliminating patient care in some communities. This environment in the late 1990s caused physicians to leave the state and forced many recent medical school graduates to pursue careers outside the state. We will never know the impact and contributions of the Mississippi students and physicians that may have been forced out of state, but Tort Reform of 2002 and 2004 made an immediate impact to keep physicians in the state and protect the practice of medicine for future Mississippi physicians.
Understanding Tort Reform of 2002 and 2004 also allows us to be thankful for strong malpractice insurance companies that provide easy access to malpractice coverage for Mississippi physicians of all specialties today. We can also see how gaps in malpractice coverage and cost of coverage caused an early trend toward hospital employment. This trend later accelerated due to the continuous increase in overhead expenses into an environment today where nearly 70% of physicians are hospital employees or owned by private equity groups.
The Tort Reform Twentieth Anniversary is to be celebrated, but it should also be a sobering reminder of how quickly lawmakers could adopt policies to move us back into an environment where physicians cannot see patients in their community, become forced to reduce services, and may choose to leave Mississippi. We appreciate the leaders in organized medicine as well as the lawmakers that found a way to come together to help the physicians and patients of Mississippi. However, we need to remain vigilant to the prevention of legislative erosion of these principles which are always at risk.
Elections have consequences, and we need to continue to support pro-medicine candidates for statewide, legislative, and judicial offices through political action committees like MMPAC. The years around the passage of Tort Reform show us the power of the physician and patient relationship and how it can be mobilized to move the lawmakers to action. 2003 was a crucial election year that helped turn the tide of Tort Reform. 2023 is another election year with highly transformative issues like the quality access to care for Mississippians and discussions toward the future design of hospital collaboration and rural health networks.
After learning about the struggle for Tort Reform in 2002 and 2004, now is the time that MSMA needs you to become more involved to raise the voice of advocacy for Mississippi physicians.