Last year, the General Assembly passed medical malpractice reform. The reform capped non-economic damages at $500,000 and put in place a higher standard for proving malpractice. In this Triangle Business Journal story, reporter Bryan deBruyn writes about the impact on malpractice insurance.
Rates for medical malpractice insurance have been in decline for five years, and a year-old state law that slapped restrictions on lawsuits is being credited with taking them down further.
Doctors buying insurance from Medical Mutual Insurance Co. of North Carolina are paying an average of $11,500 for their coverage this year. That’s down from $16,000, an all-time high, in 2007. “That’s a pretty good drop,” says Dale Jenkins, CEO of Medical Mutual, the state’s largest insurer of physicians.
