Re: GEN: Rainy Night ( and Day) In Georgia
From: Joe (forcep@intercom.net)
Thu May 31 16:16:42 2007
Duh? Crisis not big enough yet. Joe C
art fougner, md wrote:
> Obstetric losses hint at Georgia's health care crisis
> Editorial
> | | Story updated at 11:21 PM on Monday, March 27, 2006
>
> News that Elbert County soon will join a growing list of communities
> without obstetric services is yet another symptom of what is becoming a
> serious public health problem.
>
> As rising costs and other challenges prompt more doctors to stop
> performing deliveries, the availability of prenatal care in many areas
> is dwindling or, as in Elberton's case, disappearing altogether. Reduced
> access to preventative and diagnostic treatment could result in more
> pregnancy complications and even tragic outcomes.
>
> Elbert Memorial Hospital announced last week that its obstetrics unit
> will be closed after April 1. The decision came after the county's only
> obstetrician moved his practice to nearby Toccoa and the remaining group
> of family practitioners opted to no longer deliver babies. The Elbert
> County closure comes in the wake of a similar move in Wilkes County,
> where Wills Memorial Hospital shuttered its obstetrics department last
> fall. In both cases, doctors and hospital administrators cited
> financial pressures as major factors for the closures.
>
> Elbert and Wilkes counties have been caught up in a state and national
> trend of rural areas losing access to medical care, especially in the
> field of obstetrics. A March 25 article in this newspaper cited a
> statistic from the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society that
> 165 of 1,100 doctors in the field have or plan to quit delivering babies
> between 2002 and 2005.
>
> As many women in the Athens area discovered a couple of years ago when
> the county's largest OB-GYN group stopped delivering babies, the
> shortage of obstetric care isn't just a rural problem. When Athens
> Women's Clinic discontinued its obstetrical practice in 2004, the group
> blamed the move on declining insurance reimbursements and skyrocketing
> malpractice rates.
>
> Although the Georgia General Assembly last year passed one of the
> nation's toughest malpractice tort reform laws, which capped
> non-economic damages at $350,000, it has yet to result in lower premiums
> for doctors - an outcome many of the bill's critics predicted.
>
> While lawmakers have tried to avert health care shortages with financial
> fixes, the real problem may be in the way our society has come to view
> medicine, especially obstetrics. Dr. Cynthia Mercer, one of the senior
> members of the Athens Women's Clinic group, was quoted in the March 25
> article saying that doctors are being driven out of the field by a
> "continued litigious environment and the culture's desire for
> protection."
>
> http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/032806/opinion_20060328001.shtml
>
> Art
>
> --
> art fougner, md
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