Rep. Carter Nordman Photo courtesy of ballotpedia.org

Governor Kim Reynolds recently signed into law limits on medical malpractice for a certain area of potential lawsuits.

House District 47 Representative Carter Nordman tells Raccoon Valley Radio the legislature agreed to a maximum of $1 million of non-economic damages for clinics and individual physicians and $2 million for hospitals. He says even though you can’t put a price tag on someone’s pain and suffering from malpractice, lawmakers needed to find a way to be more competitive with other states that have limits on the same non-economic factors of a lawsuit. 

Nordman talks about the three county hospitals he has in the 47th House District, including Greene County Medical Center, as well as Dallas and Guthrie County Hospitals.

“They said that, ‘Hey it’s really hard to recruit and retain great healthcare providers here in rural Iowa when other states have a better place to go practice when it comes to medical malpractice. So we really are coming in par with the other states around us and it’s going to allow our county hospitals and our healthcare associations to recruit and retain great healthcare providers in the state of Iowa.”  

Nordman says this has been an ongoing issue when former Governor Terry Branstad was in office. He adds that part of the new law allows for the $2 million overall cap for hospitals to automatically increase with inflation after 2028.