The Impact of Tort Reforms on the Sanctioning of Physicians by State Licensing Boards

This article evaluates the impact of changes in tort laws on state medical licensing board actions in the United States, an area of study that has largely been overlooked in the tort reform debate. We employ negative binomial models with random effects to ascertain the impact of the passage of individual tort reforms, additional explanatory variables, and period effects on board licensing actions. Our results suggest that alterations to states' joint and several liability rules, the enactment of penalties for frivolous lawsuits, and the establishment of the National Practitioner Data Bank may have increased the use of serious sanctions by medical licensing boards, while implementation of arbitration and attorney fee regulation may have decreased their use. We call for greater attention to be paid to the impact of tort reforms on licensing actions.