OPINION: New Mexicans need medical malpractice reform

As health care leaders, our responsibility is clear: ensure patients can access high-quality care close to home. Here in New Mexico, that mission is being undermined by medical malpractice laws that are driving physicians away, forcing hospitals to cut services and threatening access to care — particularly in rural communities throughout our state. This is not an abstract policy debate. It is a real and growing crisis, and our lawmakers have the power to address it now.

Medical malpractice insurance plays an important role in protecting patients and ensuring accountability when care falls short. But when the system becomes excessively costly and punitive, which is the case here, it stops serving patients and instead begins harming them. Sky-high premiums and outsized legal exposure are forcing hospitals to make impossible choices: reduce services, delay investments or close altogether. Physicians, faced with some of the highest malpractice insurance costs in the region, are choosing to practice elsewhere. Patients are being left with fewer options, longer wait times and care that is farther from home.

The data tells a troubling story. Nearly half of New Mexicans report difficulty securing a timely appointment with a primary care provider. In Albuquerque, 59% of voters say they struggle to find a doctor or specialist. Meanwhile, from 2019 to 2024, our state experienced an 8% decline in its physician workforce — while every other southwestern state gained physicians. This is not a coincidence. It’s the predictable outcome of a system that makes practicing medicine here uniquely risky and expensive.

Our medical malpractice environment stands out for all the wrong reasons. It allows higher caps on noneconomic damages and sets a lower threshold for claiming punitive damages than neighboring states, driving insurance premiums well beyond what many hospitals can reasonably sustain. When hospitals cannot afford coverage, services and physicians disappear.

Opponents of reform often frame any change as a threat to patient protections. That argument ignores reality. A system that drives providers out of state and hospitals out of business does not protect patients, it abandons them. New Mexicans deserve better. Sensible reforms will preserve accountability while stabilizing costs, strengthening the workforce and ensuring that care remains available close to home.

We greatly appreciate lawmakers’ recent investments in Medicaid reimbursement rate increases and the package of bills the state Senate is prioritizing this session to support our state’s health care workforce. Those are important commitments to providers, hospitals and patients they care for.

But, medical malpractice insurance reform is one of the few actions lawmakers must take this session that will have the largest impact on stabilizing access to care in New Mexico, and it comes at no financial cost to the state. If this issue fails to move forward, the message to physicians, hospitals and, most importantly, patients is that a broken health care system is acceptable.

And it’s not.

Our legislators must act now.

Troy Clark is the president and CEO of the New Mexico Hospital Association.