The state’s leading physician association is one step closer to passing a medical malpractice bill after it was approved by the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday.
However, the victory came with a stinging rebuke from state Sen. David Simmons, who said the Florida Medical Association should be focusing on other issues more important to Florida doctors, including their future as independent businesses in an ever-changing health care delivery system.
Simmons said doctors in his district email him concerned that corporations are buying their practices. Instead of owning the physician practice, Simmons said, doctors will become employees.
“The entire profession is at risk. It’s at risk of no longer being a profession,” said Simmons, who ultimately voted for the bill (SB-1792). “That’s what physicians ought to be dealing with their own future. They are drowning. They are literally drowning and getting ready to be destroyed as a profession within a few years and what we are doing is we are dealing with this; a side issue.”
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The bill contains a trio of changes the FMA has made a top priority for years, including limiting who qualifies as an expert witness in a medical negligence case. Current law allows a physician who specializes in a similar specialty and who has prior experience treating the patient to qualify as a medical expert. The bill would strike that and allow only those with the same specialty to offer testimony.
Another long sought after change in the bill would allow a defendant or a defendant’s attorney to conduct an interview of subsequent treating health care providers without notifying the claimant or the claimant’s attorney. That’s a provision that concerns Sen. Joe Negron, who also voted for the bill.