Posted: 7.29.2003 10:00
am
AMERICA'S MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
CRISIS
.
Red:
States in crisis, Yellow: States showing problem
signs, White: States currently ok
American Medical Association
Recently, outbreaks of Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Monkeypox
and West
Nile Virus have challenged the public health infrastructure in the
United States. Fortunately, we have escaped a catastrophic incident
(Waiting
for Bioterror- Facing A Public Health Train Wreck), a scenario that
would be exponentially complicated due to the nation's uninsured (SARS:
America's Uninsured and the Threat of Emerging Infectious Diseases).
While conventional estimates
have placed the number of uninsured Americans at 41 million, a recent report
released by RWJF estimates that nearly 75 million Americans under the age
of 65 were uninsured at some point in 2001 and 2002. The report revealed
that four of five uninsured Americans are in working families. And though
more than half of the nation's uninsured were non-Hispanic whites, racial
minorities were disproportionately affected, with 52 percent of Hispanics
and 40 percent of African-Americans going uninsured sometime in the same
two-year span (AMA: Covering
the uninsured - Part of the Solution).
In addition to these problems,
homeland security, preparedness and response, physicians who are now forced
to discontinue medical services due to their inability to pay medical liability
premiums, may be the most significant challenge to the U.S. Public Health
Infrastructure.
In The News
-
GAO Report Suppressed: Finds
Increased Insurer Losses Behind Malpractice Crisis: Medical Malpractice
Insurance: Multiple Factors Have Contributed to Increased Premium Rates.
GAO-03-702, June
27. Highlights,
Tuesday July 29, 2003 3:57 pm ET -- -- Physician Insurers Association
of America
-
1,000
doctors provide affidavits: With rising malpractice premiums, Medicaid
and Medicare patients - the poor and the old - are affected the most, as
physicians make business decisions about what patients they can afford
to accept. Thu, Jul. 31, 2003, Talahassee Democrat.
[Edited]
American Medical Association
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/3216-7891.html
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A cry for help
How the medical liability crisis is
affecting one physician’s family |
We have heard and told countless
stories of the impact the medical liability reform crisis is having on
physicians across the country. In the background are the recounts from
the loved ones of those physicians: the husbands and wives who watch helplessly
as their spouses are forced to shut down practices, stop delivering babies
or move across state lines in search of more reasonable liability insurance
rates. But when we heard from one such spouse after the U.S. Senate voted
against a Motion to Proceed on the Patients First Act (S.11), we knew her
account would ring true with physicians and patients around the country.
Here is her story:
“All my husband wants to
do is save lives. He was very poor growing up and had to borrow money to
attend medical school. It was his dream and he truly is gifted at it, so
it hurts even more that we have lost so much when he works so hard. “My
husband is a general surgeon, but his skills are going to waste. On April
15, his hospital’s trauma center shut down. Last week, he was paged because
a trauma victim was accidentally brought to his hospital – even the ambulance
services still believe they’ll find help at these trauma centers. Our neurosurgeons
have left. One trauma [physician] – a friend who lived on our street –
moved to Kansas last week with a very heavy heart. We’ve been forced to
borrow against our house and recently had to dip into our 8-year-old daughter’s
college fund to cover his rising malpractice rates, which recently doubled
to $180,000 per year. Why are we doing this to our precious, valuable doctors?
They’re all so afraid now.
“Meanwhile, the trauma center
is showing absolutely no signs of coming back to life. I think the general
public thinks, ‘Oh, they’ll reopen the trauma center.’ But many doctors
here have lost hope. I’m even going to the hospital and putting medical
liability reform literature in the doctors’ lounge.
“This whole experience has
been rough, to say the least. We are very fortunate to have an extremely
strong marriage. I am 47, he is 46, and we never see each other anymore,
which has caused a lot of pain. He wants to be home to spend more time
with family but cannot afford to turn down consults. I myself am losing
hope. How could we let the best health care system in the world suffer?
I recently learned that my daughter had told her teacher she was worried
her dad would lose his job. In fact, one of her classmates just moved because
her father, a heart surgeon, had to relocate to Maryland, where [insurance]
rates are more affordable.
“My sister told me that she
recently read a quote in a magazine by someone who said the medical liability
problem was overblown, and that it really only affects a few high-risk
specialists. I suppose no one in his or her family needs OB/Gyns, emergency
room doctors, surgeons of any kind or internists – all of which are affected.
“On Sept. 11, 2001, my husband
and some colleagues were in New York City for a medical license renewal
seminar, and they immediately boarded a bus and went to help. Now, I think
those doctors would be nervous about helping in an accident, for fear of
opening themselves up to liability.
“Our family is in the process
of moving across state lines to Kansas, where a stabilization fund is in
place to guard against the kind of jackpot justice mentality which is ravaging
Missouri. This breaks my heart, as I have been a Missouri resident all
my life, but we feel that we have been abandoned by the Missouri Senate
and the U.S. Senate.
“We are now more in debt
than we were when we were paying his medical school bills. It feels as
if we have hit a brick wall and do not know where to go with the votes
all being killed. I have started using the phrase, ‘You can survive a lawsuit
without a lawyer, but can you survive a trauma without a doctor?’ The lawyers
need to think about this as they, too, can become victims and need those
very trauma centers they are helping to close. Specialist positions are
not filling. Physicians are not encouraging their children to enter medicine.
I’m afraid that it will be years before our trauma center reopens and,
by then, the damage will be irreparable.”
Resources: Health Law
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