"Judicial Hellholes:" Medical Malpractice Claims, Verdicts and the "Doctor Exodus" in Illinois

Abstract

Beginning about the year 2000, physicians around the nation experienced an explosive jump in their professional medical liability insurance premiums. The state of Illinois has been identified as one of the "crisis" states by the American Medical Association ("AMA") insofar as cost and availability of liability insurance is concerned. Madison and St. Clair counties, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, have garnered particular attention, acquiring the label "judicial hellhole" for medical malpractice claims. The notoriety is so great that President Bush visited Madison County in January 2005 as part of his campaign for a nationwide $250,000 cap on pain and suffering for medical malpractice jury verdicts. The claims are not limited to these two counties, however. In the greater Chicago area, in particular Cook and DuPage counties, similar claims have been made about excessive jury verdicts and their effect on professional liability insurance. Accompanying the claims of runaway juries are reports of an exodus of doctors from Illinois to escape the "abusive litigation climate." While these reports have been applied to Illinois as a whole without specific statistics about the size or nature of the exodus, various numbers have been obtained from Madison and St. Clair counties. In November 2003, an article in the Belleville News Democrat reported that fifty-nine doctors had left one hospital. In April 2004, another article stated that "[a]t least 60 doctors in the past two years have left or announced plans to leave Madison and St. Clair counties."' In 2004, the Springfield Journal-Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Wall Street Journal variously reported that the two counties had lost a total of 160 or 161 doctors.' In March 2005, the News Democrat upped its earlier figure to 136, based upon a study by two business professors from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, who estimated their figures from surveys of area hospitals and counts of doctors' offices in the area. As late as June 9, ...