Doctors are flocking to Texas, and there's conflicting reports on why.
There are more than 2,500 young doctors on the waiting list to get a spot in a Texas hospital or practice.

When the Texas Medical Board couldn't keep up with the number of applications, its leaders started to wonder why. They said it has to do with medical malpractice reform while others said doctors are not as accountable.

"I decided it was the tort reform," said Dr. Donald Patrick, executive director of the Texas Medical Board. "Doctors wanted to come to a malpractice-friendly environment."

Since 2003, when the state Legislature and voters put malpractice caps into effect, the number of license applications went up from 2,500 to more than 4,000, a 58 percent increase.

But ask a medical malpractice lawyer, and he puts the surge in physicians in a different light.

"Statistics don't lie, we are seeing more doctors coming into this state," said Jay Harvey, president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. "If doctors are coming here because of malpractice reform, that sounds like doctors are coming here, because they're less likely to be held accountable for their errors."

"I see doctors with problems, and with the 4,000 that we have, we have no more higher percentage of doctors who are troubled than we had in 2000," Patrick said.

The problem comes from keeping up with the paperwork.

"We were taken totally by surprise, so we didn't have staffing to take care of this," Patrick said.

That's something the Legislature fixed this year. The Texas Medical Board has six new positions to help clear up the backlog. It also plans to go to an automated system this year to speed up the process.