WARREN, Ohio – The president of the Trumbull County Medical Society, Dr. Richard J. Loges, surrounded by a lineup of his colleagues, told reporters Wednesday that the price of practicing medicine in the Mahoning Valley is getting out of hand for both physicians and their patients, especially pregnant women.
Unwarranted jury awards, as Loges and his colleagues see it, and the higher cost of medical malpractice premiums make it hard to retain the physicians who practice here and to recruit new doctors to the Valley. These higher health care costs add to employers’ overhead and make it harder for Valley companies to compete, they said.
With some 30 physicians standing behind them in the ballroom of the Avalon Inn, Loges, Dr. Morris W. Pulliam, president of the medical staff at Trumbull Memorial Hospital, and Dr. Robert Gurdak, chairman of pathology at Trumbull Memorial, asserted that the price of malpractice insurance premiums are threatening access to medical care, especially neonatal care, and deterring new doctors from coming here to establish practices.
The premiums physicians in Trumbull and Mahoning counties pay is 25% to 40% higher than most of the rest of Ohio and much of the United States, they said. In a brochure the medical society published, the doctors say, “Medical liability insurance for Trumbull and Mahoning County physicians has doubled since 2000 and is 25-40% higher than the majority of the state and country.” (Emphasis in original.)
Data the society provides says that the annual malpractice premiums obstetrician/gynecologists in Warren pay are $108,922 compared to $81,034 in Columbus and $61,113 in Cincinnati. For general surgeons the figures respectively are $76,651, $57,192 and $43,185. For those who practice internal medicine, the figures are $22,866, $17,288 and $13,304.
“Health care in Trumbull County is on life support,” Pulliam declared. “We must address the eroding access to quality health care that all of us may suffer as a result of recent legal actions taken against local physicians.”
In the Q&A that followed their remarks, the physicians would not specify the “recent legal actions” and refused to comment on the lawsuit most reporters thought prompted yesterday’s press event.
Regardless, an elephant remained in the ballroom even though the physicians would not acknowledge it and refused to discuss it.
The elephant was the $13.9 million verdict a Trumbull County jury awarded the Cobb family, an award being appealed although a procedural hearing was scheduled today in the 11th District Court of Appeals.
Dr. Tara Shipman of Cortland, an OB/GYN, was sued for malpractice by the parents of Haley Cobb, whom Shipman delivered Jan. 4, 2000. Apparently Haley did not get enough oxygen during her birth, which resulted in cerebral palsy and other handicaps. The verdict for the $13.9 million in compensatory and punitive damages, delivered last Oct. 11, is yet to be paid, the law firm for the Cobbs said yesterday.
What also upset the 30-some physicians were the recent actions of law enforcement officers when they visited Shipman’s office and seized her personal property in an effort to satisfy the award.
Pulliam, Loges and Gurdak spoke in generalities and tried to stick to the topic of “how excessive jury awards in medical malpractice cases and punitive legal actions against doctors will ultimately lead to reduced access to quality medical care, a shortage of medical specialists, higher health care costs and fewer jobs in our community,” as the accompanying press release put it.
Although they would not identify the doctors, the physicians said they knew of obstetrician/gynecologists in the county who have left the field to practice other areas of medicine because of the rising insurance premiums and fear of being sued.
“We call for stronger medical liability reform, reform that balances the individual’s right to legal action with the community’s need for quality medical care. Excessive punitive actions against physicians cannot be tolerated,” Gurdak said in his prepared remarks. “We also ask for community leaders to use their influence to discourage reckless attacks on the doctors and other health care professionals who treat and care for us.”
Ask to identify the reforms he sought, Gurdak shied away from even suggesting reform he deemed worthy of consideration.
The physicians did agree on there should be caps on how much a jury could award in punitive damages, just as tort reform has set caps on compensatory damages.
“It’s a broken system,” Loges said in his prepared remarks, “with some of the biggest cracks right here in Trumbull County. But we can work toward fixing it.”
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.