Pennsylvania's medical malpractice crisis took center stage Tuesday at the state Capitol.

White-coated doctors buttonholed lawmakers on the need for new litigation rules to lower "unjust" malpractice jury awards and high legal costs during the first of several lobbying days organized by the Pennsylvania Medical Society. The Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association in turn emphasized the need for public disclosure of medical errors to weed out bad doctors.

House lawmakers met behind closed doors to discuss options to rein in rising malpractice-insurance costs that many claim are driving doctors out of Pennsylvania.

All the activity is spurred, in part, by concerns that health care for patients will be jeopardized if doctors in various lines of medical specialties decide they can't afford to pay insurance premiums and continue to work in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Mark Schweiker has urged the General Assembly to make medical-malpractice reform a priority, saying it affects everyone "from expectant mothers to the obstetricians who deliver their babies ... from trauma victims to trauma center specialists." Schweiker ordered several stop-gap moves last month to ensure doctors weren't hit with new costs and surcharges on Jan. 1 from a state-run fund that pays for judgments, awards and claims that exceed basic limits in malpractice insurance policies.

The governor attributes a dramatic increase in the cost of medical-malpractice insurance to a combination of several things, including a recent spate of high jury awards in malpractice cases, a declining stock market and the economic recession.

Neither Schweiker nor legislative leaders have offered specific remedies and it may take a while for Harrisburg to broker a solution that will be acceptable to the influential constituencies with a stake in the health-care system -- the doctors, hospitals, trial lawyers and business community.

House Republicans are spending a good chunk of time this week in informal closed-door discussions about the issue, said Stephen Drachler, spokesman for House Majority Leader John Perzel, R-Philadelphia. He described the process at this stage as one of examining all the proposals on the table and seeking which ones can muster the 102 votes needed to pass the House.

The various lobbies have put forth plenty of proposals for lawmakers to chew over.

The PMA is offering three key proposals directly aimed at lowering insurance costs, said spokesman Chuck Moran. They include placing a legal cap on the amount of jury awards for pain and suffering, changing court rules to let juries know if an injured plaintiff has received compensation from another source and allowing insurance companies to pay malpractice awards over a period of time, instead of in one lump sum.

The PMA proposals also address such issues as discouraging lawyers from shopping around for areas of the state with sympathetic juries and tightening qualifications for those who give expert testimony in trials. Only doctors in the same specialty should be allowed to testify about the practices of a colleague, said Moran.

Lawyers see things differently.

Malpractice premiums will go down if the public has ready access to information about whether a doctor has a record of making medical errors that are regarded as preventable, said Clifford A. Rieders, a Williamsport lawyer who is president of the trial lawyers association. Several recent studies have shown that preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States The state should enact laws requiring doctors and hospitals to disclose such errors to the state and make the information available online, added Rieders.

The state should also establish a process for disciplining errant doctors similar to what lawyers are subject to.

"Patients will avoid bad doctors," he said adding the result will be lower premiums for the rest of the doctors.