It is bewildering that the Star-Telegram would showcase the West Texas town of Gail, population 190, in a county of 729, as the barometer of tort reform’s effectiveness.

The expectant mother drove more than an hour to be delivered by an obstetrician in Lubbock but could have cut her drive time in half had she gone to Cogdell Memorial Hospital in neighboring Snyder, where any of five family practitioners/obstetricians could have delivered her baby.

In the two years before tort reform (2001-2003), 82 Texas counties lost at least one primary care doctor. One hundred counties lost at least one high-risk specialist. Five counties lost their only family doctor. Fourteen counties lost their only internist and nine lost the only pediatrician they had.

Since tort reform, rural counties have seen a 27-percent increase in obstetricians. Statewide, during the past three years, the growth in the number of primary care physicians has outpaced population growth by 33 percent. Doctors have returned to the emergency room. Thousands of high-risk specialists have been newly licensed. These numbers represent medical care the patients of this state would otherwise be denied. Because of tort reform, 99.7 percent of all Texans live within 20 miles of a doctor. -See Map Here-

Attracting doctors into primary care is a national problem. Lawsuit reform, in itself, will not fix all of the healthcare needs of our rural counties. However, the number of doctors serving in West Texas would be fewer today had reforms not passed.

— Rex Hyer, M.D., and Gary L. Floyd, M.D., Tarrant County Medical Society