Dear Chris: As promised during yesterday's meeting, here is a statement by the Chair concerning his decision to delay MAP until we can brief stakeholders on the details of our process changes. We will contact you shortly concerning the date of the briefing. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thanks. At a hearing before the State Senate yesterday, numerous stakeholders in the workers' compensation system expressed concerns about the Board's plan to reform and streamline its concilliation [sic] process. I continue to believe strongly that the proposed changes will result in lower costs, and maintain full protections for the parties' due process rights. Nonetheless, given the scope of concern expressed by many stakeholders and by the Legislature, I think it is appropriate to delay the initiative so that there is time for more discussion and feedback. In the next several weeks, the Board will set up a forum in which the details of the Board's process changes can be set forth before interested parties in full detail, and where there can be a full and frank discussion about the concilliation [sic] process. After the briefing, I will consider all suggestions and proposals by stakeholders before a reform program is implemented.

[t]he majority must accept what it purports to reject, namely, that what will be malpractice in the context of ongoing medical treatment may not, no matter how glaring the breach, be malpractice in the context of an exam understood by the parties thereto to have no medical treatment objective. Indeed, most of what would be malpractice in the former context is not even actionable in the latter.

The cause of action the majority now recognizes for medical malpractice is not only still-born in this action, but, I will venture, will never possess viability as an actual claim for relief. I am confident that the majority has not the slightest intention to open the vistas of malpractice so wide as to actually permit such claims in the absence of anything cognizable as treatment. What is involved then is simply the arbitrary creation of an exception for a group of practitioners who, as a group, neither seek nor are entitled to the protection properly afforded and reserved to those engaged in the delivery of medical care and treatment.