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GEN: Rainy Night ( and Day) In GeorgiaFrom: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)Tue Apr 11 09:17:55 2006
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 Support Free Speech Buy Danish!
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