Arizona Senate votes to raise standards to prove malpractice.

The Arizona Daily Star (6/17) reported that an Arizona Senate panel "voted Wednesday to make it more difficult for patients hurt in emergency rooms to collect damages from the doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who cause their injuries. SB 1018 leaves in place the requirement that someone suing for medical malpractice show that the care received did not meet the professional standards expected." But SB 1018 "would bar recovery unless malpractice can be proven by 'clear and convincing evidence,' a burden more difficult to prove" than the current standard, which requires only a "preponderance of the evidence." Contact your state senator's office and let him or her know that you oppose this bill and want emergency room physicians held to the same level of proof in court to which all other doctors are held and to which every other Arizonian is held. You want to see care improved in our emergency rooms, not allowed to slip backwards.