Return of screening panel in malpractice cases urged

Erin Neff

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | 8:42 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Trial lawyers Monday attacked a proposal to resurrect screening panels in medical malpractice cases, saying the bill -- sponsored by an assemblyman who is a doctor -- would jeopardize the law the Legislature passed last year.

Assembly Bill 300 by Assemblyman Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, would reinstate the medical-dental screening panel that hears cases of alleged malpractice before the cases go to court.

During last summer's special session on malpractice, lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 1, eliminating the screening panel -- largely at the request of insurers and physicians. AB1 also instituted a $350,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in malpractice cases.

"I'm very grateful for what happened there, but I was disappointed the medical screening panel was eliminated," Mabey, a gynecologist, said Monday in a hearing before the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Bill Bradley, a lobbyist representing the Nevada Trial Lawyers Association, said that while he had championed the screening panel in years past, he could not support bringing it back under Nevada's tort reform.

"We feel the combination of severe tort reform and the screening panel is overly burdensome to medical malpractice victims," Bradley said.

The panel was eliminated, in part, because whatever the three attorneys and three doctors who make up the panel decided made no difference in whether the case proceeded to trial. In some cases the panel also took years to hear a complaint due to a backlog.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley said that instead of screening the cases, the panels had become "mini-tribunals."

AB300 would reinstate the panel but moves it under the purview of an administrative law judge. The old system had the panel under the state insurance commissioner.

Under questioning from the committee about whether doctors had supported eliminating the screening panel last summer, Havins added: "Physicians should have done more listening and less talking during the special session."

Buckley, D-Las Vegas, chairwoman of an interim committee that had been studying the malpractice crisis until Gov. Kenny Guinn convened the Legislature in special session last August, said that was a good observation.

"We told you this wasn't a good idea," Buckley said. "It strikes me that the physicians should have listened to the Legislature on this issue."

Insurance Commissioner Alice Molasky-Arman testified that reinstating the screening panel would cost $532,000 over the next two fiscal years due to the increased staffing that the panel would require.