Doctors ‘Need Some Hope’

From the Charleston Daily Mail, January 29, 2003, Wednesday
Copyright 2003 Charleston Newspapers

Because her malpractice insurance shot up from $ 28,000 last year to $ 98,000 this year in the state’s program, a Huntington obstetrician recently shut down her obstetrics practice.

Dr. Nina Smith couldn’t pay what the state Board of Risk and Insurance Management charged, said Dr. Phillip Stevens, a former president of the West Virginia State Medical Association and a Huntington ear, nose and throat doctor.

Unless a measure of legislative tort reform sets up conditions for a successful physician mutual insurance company to absorb the 1,000 or so doctors in the state’s insurance program for physicians, more doctors will have to restrict their practices, retire early or leave the state, Stevens said.

“Physicians in this state really need some hope that it is not going to get worse,” Stevens said.

In an informal survey this week of 73 physicians, nearly three-quarters of them said a cap of $ 250,000 on non-economic damages is a must for them to maintain their practices.

More than half said they are considering moving their practices if the Senate does not approve a lawsuit reform bill with similar content to the one the House has passed.

“I don’t think anybody is saying this as a threat,” said Dr. James Baek, a radiologist at Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston. “I hear people are seriously considering moving their practices. It’s just the reality of the situation with reimbursements being what they are and premium rates what they are.”

Of the 73 physicians surveyed, about 50 said they have no confidence in the replacement plan lawmakers now are considering that would combine different practitioners and hospitals.

Both Phillips and Baek believe an all-physicians mutual would work best – not a company with hospitals and clinics. They say if legislative leaders want to rid the state of the insurance program that covers physicians, they should set up two companies.

Further, if the company was a true physicians mutual, doctors could do a much better job of policing, Phillips said.

“It’s a myth that doctors don’t police themselves,” he said. “Rules created by the legal profession make it virtually impossible to remove a doctor’s license.

“We’re interested in a true physicians mutual. They have the best track records. You can make hard and right decisions about what to do, which doctors you want in it, which surcharges, which doctors should not stop practicing medicine.”

Phillips said legislators just don’t understand the level of discontent among physicians.