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Does tort reform limit opportunities for legal nurse be? Absolutely not. As a pioneer in the field of legal nurse consulting, I have watched this profession grow and flourish during the last 21 years. During this time, many states have some kind of reform especially with non-economic damages (pain and suffering). But, in any state where the tort reform is, legal nurse consultants are actively and successfully practicing and growing their businesses by leaps and boundaries. We will continue to to benefit even more electrifying growth over the next ten years.

Here's why:

1. The number of U.S. attorneys continues to increase annually. Currently there are 1058662 * attorneys in the U.S. and how the Houston Chronicle states, at least "25 percent deal with medical malpractice and personal injury cases."

2. At the national level, the U.S. Senate, said: "No" to a tort reform bill that limiting non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in malpractice suits to $ 250,000. Even if the Senate bill had legal nurse consultants would take much to work on cases.

3. Most medical malpractice cases legal nurse consultants consult on the significant economic damages, like medical care and lost earning capacity. These high dollar cases keeplegal still nurse consultants busy.

4. Legal nurse consultants not only advise on medical malpractice cases. We consult on general personal injury, product liability, toxic tort, criminal and a multitude of other cases. Cases of injuries of all kinds will be with us for as long as Americans breathe. Recovery for negligent injuries and lost wages, medical bills and the like from these injuries is the American way and is an old law that goes back to 2100 BC in Mesopotamia

5. In states that non-economic damages, lawyers are a little more selective, focusing on cases with significant physical and psychological damages (not just emotional distress or pain and suffering). This means that both plaintiff and defense increasingly on legal nurse consultantsfor expression that the best business decision in every case they take on. I have even a day on which it is legal malpractice for an attorney not on a legal nurse consultants working behind the scenes on their cases.

Medical malpractice cases simply are not gone. According to a March 3, 2003 article in BusinessWeek, the National Center for State Courts found that despite the tort reform, the national volume of medical liability cases has not changed in the last five years.

One factor contributing to the ongoing flood of litigation: medical errors in hospitals kill up to 98,000 people each year, according to a 1999 study by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. That is 268 patients per day, or the equivalent of a fully loaded jumbo jet crashing every other day. These deaths is higher than the number of people who die from AIDS, breast cancer and traffic accidents together. All of the legal nurse consultants I know would actually welcome a lack of these cases.

Where is the real "crisis"?

Is not this "attack on America" "If so many people killed, what we in the hospitals should reform? Instead of worrying about the tort reform, we should have the Dark Ages of health care provided by managed care providers and negligent homicide, the 268 hospital patients every day.

Despite this boom in hospital "victims", "according to the BusinessWeek article mentioned above, the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) reported that in the past ten years malpractice payouts have on average only 6.2% per year. But the Journal of Health Affairs showed that the average percentage of medical cost inflation in this period of ten years from 6.7%. That does not sound like an explosion in malpractice awards to me.

We are not in a crisis of litigation but a crisis of abuse. The NPDB reported that from 1990 to 2002, 5% of U.S. doctors were responsible for 54% of medical malpractice payouts, including jury awards and out-of-court settlements. The NPDB against this further: of 35,000 physicians with two or more payments in this period, only 8% were disciplined, and 2774 physicians, the payments in at least five cases, only 463 were disciplined.

The severity of this "discipline" is open to question. On 28 August 2003, the Houston Chronicle reported on the case of a Houston doctor has been sued 78 times and payouts in 45 cases totaling more than $ 13.3 million. His punishment? The temporary suspension of his license. I find this especially disturbing because I am on many cases against the doctor, as far back as the early 1980s.

Even these "bad apples" in the medical profession do not significantly increase malpractice insurance premiums for the rest of the doctors. The truth is that insurance companies do not make their money from premiums, but by investing the premiums. If the interest rates and yields are high, businesses thrive, and often in competition with each other premiums. If interest rates are low (like now), the company supplies are suffering, and they must be the premium in order for the loss of capital income. In June 2003, the General Accounting Office report to Congress (GAO-03-702, available at www.gao.gov), which showed that the insurers' pricing decisions were affected not only by their losses on malpractice claims, but also by their loss of income from investments, prior premium history and other market participants such as market share and the level of competition.

The bottom line on tort reform is: Research has shown that there is no evidence of rising jury awards or the so-called high cost of litigation, and that the economy is the key to increasing insurance premiums abuse.

As regrettable as they are, high-profile parties like Linda McDougal (the doctor, the woman whose unwarranted double mastectomy) and Jessica Santillan (the 17-year-old whose doctors are not with her organ donor) may help to educate public. The tragedy is that health care can disfigure or kill someone and still have the courage to ask for a limitation of damages, a concept that is in fact free, these paid professionals and for-profit institutions from personal responsibility. Try to explain that the injured person and their family.

As long as the healthcare industry does not police itself, it will be much work for us all.

Inc. Top 10 Entrepreneurs Vickie L. Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD is the founder and president of Vickie Milazzo Institute (http://www.LegalNurse.com), the oldest legal nurse consultant certification company. Pioneering work in the legal nurse consulting profession in 1982. She is the author of the self-help book for women, inside every woman (http://www.InsideEveryWoman.com).