Week five of the legislative session has come to an end. This week we continued our policy work in subcommittee, as well as, floor debate. We also welcomed a number of visitors to the Capitol this week.

Constituents and medical providers came to the Capitol to talk about the continued need for tort reform in medical malpractice suits and how it relates to recruiting doctors to Iowa. One specific provider told me when looking for a state to practice, there were two main areas of concern: What was the cost of insurance, and what are the state’s laws on malpractice? We continued to discuss how the impact of these two variables could make or break a medical practice.

This week on the floor of the Senate we passed HF161. This bill implements a limit of $1 million for doctors, $2 million for hospitals, on the amount of non-economic damages a jury may award to a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case.

This reform has been a priority for medical professionals in Iowa for many years. Limits on non-economic damages exist in 33 other states, including California and several states surrounding Iowa.

Rural health care facilities are ill-equipped to handle judgements like a recent $97 million verdict in Iowa City. They would likely be forced to close. Iowa would continue to lose OB/GYN services and rural mothers would be forced to travel even farther to the nearest provider. This hit close to home for many of my constituents with the closure of the OB/GYN department in Marshalltown.

HF 161 made a few other changes to this area of law. It redirected punitive damages to the plaintiff instead of the state, as current law dictates. It also created a medical error task force with the goal of identifying causes of errors and reducing their occurrences.

Medical malpractice incidents are traumatic and often have permanent consequences. Reasonable compensation for those incidents is appropriate and that is why the punitive and economic damages remain uncapped. HF 161 seeks to find balance between awards and keeping an environment for accessible, affordable and quality health care in all corners of Iowa.

Please feel free to reach out with your comments.

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Jeff Edler, a Republican from State Center, represents District 26 in the Iowa Senate.