Medicine’s work this session to preserve Texas’ landmark medical liability reforms started and ended like legislative sessions past with a perennial attempt to index the landmark 2003 noneconomic damages cap to inflation. But that story had a twist this session in that the vehicle to do so, House Bill 4036, was pushed by a pair of Republicans alongside its typical Democrat contingency.
The tale concluded, yet again, with a happy ending for medicine as HB 4036, and other medical liability encroachments like it, failed. And the Texas Medical Association was able to prevent new liability risks that threaten access to care, its biggest win coming on the vaccine front in defeating Senate Bill 95 – another persistent theme the past two sessions.
But these liability landmines, among others, forbode a sequel with perhaps tougher twists ahead. Threats from other sectors, for instance, came dangerously close to disrupting well-established medical liability laws and other physician protections TMA has won over the years.
Among the other snares TMA sidestepped this session was House Bill 2072, which would have chipped away at the Texas Advance Directives Act by eliminating the statute of limitations and raising penalties to a first-degree felony charge.
In passage of House Bill 923 by Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez (D-Farmers Branch) and Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano), meanwhile, TMA was able to fend off attempts to completely undermine physician input on the Texas Medical Disclosure Panel and retain a majority physician voice. As a means of reducing medical liability costs, the panel was set up under a decades-old tort reform to determine which risks and hazards related to medical care and surgical procedures must be disclosed to patients or persons authorized to consent for patients and to develop and update related disclosure forms.
Alisa Pierce
Reporter, Division of Communications and Marketing
(512) 370-1469