Tennessee nursing homes lobby for caps on damage claims
January 15th, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Tennessee nursing homes are lobbying the legislature to put a cap on the amount of damages that plaintiffs can collect in court, according to a report in Nashville, Tennessee’s The City Paper. Sixteen states, including Tennessee, do not put monetary limit for damages such as pain and suffering, which has resulted in millions of dollars in damages awarded to victims for nursing homes‘ violations of patient care. The nursing home industry says without damage limits, nursing homes in those states become a target for out-of-state trial lawyers.
The AARP and trial lawyers say that the nursing home industry is simply trying to protect itself at a time when reports of violations at nursing homes are running rampant in the media. The opposition already has caused the powerful nursing home industry to revamp its “The Nursing Home Patient Protection Act of 2008” proposal, raising its proposed cap from $300,000 to $500,000. The lobby group also removed language opposed by AARP that would have allowed nursing homes to require their patients to sign arbitration agreements to prevent lawsuits and to require nursing home suits to have the same legal restrictions as medical malpractice claims.
According to a study conducted by the nursing home industry, Tennessee nursing homes paid nearly $5,000 on average per patient on liability costs, whereas states that had tort reform paid about a quarter of that on average per patient. A nursing home representative said that the mounting costs paid by nursing homes to defend lawsuits eats into profits that could be invested to improve patient care.
Tennessee Rep. Mike Turner, a firefighter who fought the 2003 Tennessee nursing home fire that killed 16 people, says the caps would open the door for more negligence. “These are our most vulnerable people and they earned the right to be treated with dignity in their old age,” Turner said to the paper. “I just think by capping it, we’ve done a disservice to them.”
The nursing home industry and trial lawyers have agreed to meet later this week to discuss a reasonable compromise.