With the explosion of megamillion jury awards nationwide and insurance premiums at Emory jumping 40% each year for the past three years, it's no wonder that tort reform is our top priority in the Georgia General Assembly this year.

In fact, surveys consistently show that more than 70% of the American public supports putting the brakes on runaway jury awards and more than 80% feel that rising medical malpractice costs threaten the delivery of quality health care.

The American Medical Association has identified Georgia as one of 19 states in a medical liability crisis today, as doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes struggle to continue to provide quality patient care while bearing the financial burden of escalating liability insurance premiums for medical professionals. Even though Emory is self-funded for the first $5 million of every malpractice suit, soaring medical liability premiums are our single biggest overhead cost.

Georgia's "lottery" system of awards hurts patients' access to health care as more providers stop providing high-risk services, such as delivering babies or reading mammograms. "Patients also pay the price of defensive medicine, which is not only costly to patients but a practice that medical students should be discouraged from," says medical school Dean Thomas Lawley.

"Tort reform is something everyone can do something about," says Michael Johns, CEO of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. "Legislators listen to their constituents, and every card, letter and most important, personal contact, make a big impression." He urges physicians, nurses, administrators, and staff to go to the state Capitol and tell your legislators why tort reform is important to everyone's health. Tell them you support legislation that places caps on noneconomic damages, qualifies who can testify as an expert witness, apportions damages according to each defendant's degree of fault (thus eliminating the joint and several liability rule), and reduces awards to plaintiffs by their degree of fault (such as a patient failing to comply with his or her physician's orders).

To learn more about the issues and to find out what you can do, contact Linda Womack, Emory's director of state government affairs, at lwomac2@emory.edu or 404-727-5306.