Re: Florida group uses rally to send message about need to punish bad doctors
From: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)
Thu Oct 17 14:38:59 2002
the irony remains that there is little evidence to support large
judgements as preventing bad outcomes or "medical errors." as one
attorney told me - it's not about truth - it's all about appearances.
ah well ...
art
At Thu, 17 Oct 2002, D. Ashley Hill, MD wrote:
>
>At Thu, 17 Oct 2002, rmodugno@aol.com wrote:
>
>>FLORIDA GROUP USES RALLY TO SEND MESSAGE ABOUT NEED TO PUNISH BAD DOCTORS
>>Orlando Sentinel
>>http://www.healthleaders.com/news/newspage1.php?contentid=39038
>>
>The group described above met in response to a rally held by a large
>group of physicians, nurses, office staff and concerned citizens who met
>yesterday at Florida Hospital (where I work) to educate citizens about
>the liability crisis. Local physicians are not asking for restrictions
>against suing for malpractice, but rather want caps on "pain and
>suffering" awards and a better fee structure for malpractice lawyers. If
>a patient is harmed by malpractice they shoulc be able to collect
>appropriate compensation for lost wages and future medical care, as well
>as a capped "pain and suffering" amount (say, 250,000 dollars). That's
>the main component of our demands. Unfortunately, it sounds like a lot
>of these counterdemonstrators want to protect their ability to win
>multimillion dollar "pain and suffering" awards.
>
>This type of greed is one of the main reasons many of the ob/gyn
>physicians I know are circling their wagons and preparing to leave
>Florida, give up OB services, or retire early. We have lost around 10
>local ob/gyn doctors and more are planning to leave. Those of us
>remaining are inundated with calls from pregnant women who want someone
>to deliver them. To put it in perspective for our foreign colleagues, a
>gynecologist I know who does part time office work, no surgery, no
>obstetrics, and no in-hospital work and who has no lawsuits just saw her
>annual premiums increase from 2,000 a year to over 22,000. Each of my
>partners and I pay around 135,000 a year. One guy, who has only one
>suit against him, has to pay over 200,000 this year, and in Dade/Broward
>counties the median premium for ob/gyns is 209,000 per year. I like
>Orlando and Florida, but if I had to pay that much a year in malpractice
>premiums I, too, would hit the road.
>
>Ashley
>
>--
>D. Ashley Hill, MD
>Associate Director
>Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
>Florida Hospital Family Practice Residency
>Orlando, Florida
>
--
art fougner, md
ich bin ein New Yorker
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