On March 25, 2025, Dr. Lawrence Andrade announced that he and his wife, Dr. Andra Andrade were leaving New Mexico due to the skyrocketing cost of medical malpractice insurance. Collectively, they served 9,000 patients. Their departure is a symptom of the medical malpractice crisis facing New Mexico.

We are the only state in the nation that has lost doctors during the past 5 years. The reason? The cost of medical malpractice insurance. We have the highest per capita medical malpractice lawsuits in the country. It is causing our doctors to flee, a scarcity of specialists and forcing patients to wait days, weeks or sometimes months to schedule necessary visits with their doctors.

Compounding the problem is that 40% of our doctors are over the age of 65 and nearing retirement, and nearly half of the doctors trained in New Mexico are leaving after completing their residency.

We can fix this by:

1. Placing caps on non-economic damages, just as California legislators did when they passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act.

2. Capping Attorney’s fees in malpractice cases to discourage the filing of frivolous lawsuits.

3. Joining Interstate Medical Licensure Compacts to alleviate our doctor shortage and increase access to clinics and telehealth services.

4. Increasing the number of residency slots, expanding loan forgiveness program for medical school graduates who remain in New Mexico, and the stipends offered for those entering the medical profession.

I have no interest in making it difficult for a patient to recover damages when they are harmed by faulty medical care, but we can ensure that justice is done without running our best and brightest out of New Mexico.