Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Ignoring the voters

A medical records amendment was approved last year by voters, but lawmakers have passed a measure interpreting it in the most restrictive way.

When 8 out of 10 voters say they want access to records of medical mistakes made by doctors and hospitals, Floridians should expect their elected representatives to follow through. What we have gotten instead is interference.

The House and Senate have passed legislation that interprets a constitutional amendment approved by voters last year in the most restrictive way. Instead of letting any patient or potential patient obtain the medical records as Amendment 7 contemplated, legislators passed a bill (SB 938) that would limit the information available and who gets it. The person making the request would have to be a patient of the doctor or hospital in question and have "the same or substantially similar condition, treatment or diagnosis" as the information being sought. At that point it may be too late to do any good.

That is not what voters believe they approved. Although the amendment was sponsored by trial lawyers in their battle with doctors over medical malpractice, it unleashed pent-up frustration over the inability to get accurate information about the performance of a doctor or a hospital. Eighty-one percent of voters approved Amendment 7, and its language clearly expressed its intent. "...Patients have a right to have access to any records made or received in the course of business by a health care facility or provider relating to any adverse medical incident." Such incidents were further defined as "medical negligence (or) intentional misconduct" that could have caused "injury to or death of a patient."

The intent is clear, but lawmakers ignored it. They listened more to lobbyists and doctors who contribute to their campaigns than to the voters. Yet it doesn't have to be that way.

Another amendment approved last year raises the state minimum wage by $1 an hour. It had powerful enemies, too, and passed by a smaller margin, 71 percent. Rather than working to weaken the amendment, however, two senators (one Republican, one Democrat) did something extraordinary. They got representatives of both business owners and labor to work out an acceptable compromise, and both sides say they got what they wanted out of the bill without subverting voter intention.

It should have been the same with Amendment 7, but it should come as no surprise that it didn't. Legislators have spent much of this session working to severely limit the constitutional amendment process and silence the voice of the voters. Failing that, they can always go back to their old trick of ignoring the will of the people when it proves to be inconvenient.

[Last modified April 26, 2005, 01:05:18]