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Sunshine State Looking Cloudy for Patients
 In April, Protect Patients Now reported on the growing physician shortage in Florida’s Palm Beach County, and the tragic outcome when one emergency patient couldn’t find the care he needed at a critical time. A new study released by Florida State University has found that the shortage is statewide and worse than previously believed. Earlier estimates had pegged the number of Florida physicians at about 50,000. But the FSU study found the number is actually closer to 34,000. None of this is good news for patients.
With medical lawsuit abuse and out-of-control liability costs discouraging new doctors from setting up practice in Florida and forcing many others to leave the state or retire early, the future looks increasingly cloudy for patients in the sunshine state. The study found that a full 13 percent of Florida’s doctors plan to leave or significantly reduce their practice in the next five years. Meanwhile, the state is adding some 300 thousand residents every year. As they say, something’s got to give. Unfortunately, given the state’s political gridlock on medical liability reform, all that’s giving so far is patient access to quality medical care. See the full story here.
Patient Access to Care Crisis Erupts in Hawaii
 Several Hawaiian TV news channels and media outlets recently carried a plaintive cry for help for patients, chronicling the shortage of physicians in the island paradise and laying blame directly at the feet of an out-of-control medical liability crisis. “This is a problem that is affecting everyone in this State in terms of access to their physician,” said Cynthia Goto, president of the Hawaii Medical Association. With the price of medical liability insurance rising some 90 percent in the last 5 years, and reimbursements declining, some physicians are actually losing money on their practice.
State insurance commission J.P Schmidt agrees that the “lack of medical liability reform is a major obstacle” to recruiting doctors. Already, according to the Hawaii Medical Association, rising liability insurance premiums have convinced 42 percent of surveyed Hawaii OB-GYNs to stop providing pregnancy care for women, while 30 percent of Hawaii’s Orthopedic surgeons have already left the islands, and many medical students said they plan to leave because insurance costs are too high. “If you are injured on a neighbor island,” Goto warns, “chances are there is not going to be a specialist to take care of you.” See the news broadcasts (click here), (click here), and (here).
What, Me Worry?
 The PPN newsletter would like to officially award our 2007 Alfred E. Neuman award for “extraordinary complacency in the face of crisis” to Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, who recently heralded his state’s medical liability “success story.” The Governor’s announcement was based on the fact that after years of sky-rocketing increases, the state is seeing a cyclical moderation in medical liability insurance costs, which are still almost double the national average.
The real story behind the Governor’s “success” can be seen in the fact that the state has to finance half of its physicians’ insurance coverage with tax dollars and that efforts are underway in the legislature to bribe medical students graduating from Pennsylvania schools with loan forgiveness if they don’t flee the state, as some 92 percent of them presently do. Meanwhile, medical specialists are becoming increasingly scarce, with maternity wards closed down across northeast Philadelphia and a total of zero emergency neurosurgeons available to treat the half a million residents of Chester County. Ask Pennsylvania patients who can’t get the care they need if they consider their state a “success story.”
You can read more on this story (here), and see past reports in the DMLR newsletter on the continuing crisis in Pennsylvania here.
Déjà vu All Over Again in Illinois
 Once again, successful medical liability reform measures has been struck down by the Illinois Courts. Earlier this month, a Cook County circuit judge ruled that a 2005 law instituting moderate limits on medical liability are unconstitutional, setting the stage for a showdown before the Illinois Supreme Court, most likely in 2008.
Similar limits on medical liability awards have been tossed out twice before by the Illinois Supreme Court. Unfortunately for Illinois patients, the fear of a reversal has dampened the otherwise strongly positive effects of the 2005 law. According to Howard Peters of the Illinois Hospital Association, the 2005 limits staunched the flow of doctors leaving the state and made it easier to recruit new doctors fresh out of medical school. Lawsuits are down dramatically and insurance companies have lowered their rates by 5 to 30 percent.
“It’s working to bring doctors back to the state,” says Travis Aiken of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch, “and in the twinkling of an eye it could all disappear because of one Cook Country Judge.” That would be a tragedy, and another dramatic example of why Protect Patients Now is working tirelessly to enact national medical liability reform. You can read stories on the court decision (here), (here), and (here).
Mitt Romney Calls For an End to Frivolous Lawsuits
 On the stump in Iowa, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney added his voice to the call for medical liability reform that includes reasonable limits on non-economic damages:
“I believe we have to enact federal caps on non-economic and punitive damages related to malpractice,” Romney told an enthusiastic crowd of students and faculty at Des Moines University. “These lottery-sized awards and frivolous lawsuits may enrich the trial lawyers but they put a heavy burden on doctors, hospitals and, of course, through defensive medicine, they put a burden on the entire health care system.”
Looks like medical liability is an issue that is gaining real traction in the election campaign. Romney is now the third leading Republican hopeful — along with John McCain and Rudy Giuliani — to take the trail bar head on and call for meaningful reform to our broken system. You can read the full story here. |
