Medical Malpractice

(HHS Calls For National Malpractice Legislation). This, In turn, has caused a big problem for doctors that can no longer afford to pay for their insurance or for others that find they have been dropped by their insurance companies and cannot find a replacement. Hospitals bylaws mandate that doctors carry insurance in order to practice.
             Even some hospitals in certain states find that they can no longer afford the high malpractice insurance rates. This has forced the hospitals to eliminate several specialty doctors, because they have the greatest number of malpractice suits filed against them marking them as greater liabilities. In states where medical facilities are in critical condition, such as Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia hospitals are closing entire clinics. In Las Vegas, the only trauma center in the area was closed for 10 days in July, forcing critically injured patients to be transported by helicopter to California or be treated in ill-equipped local emergency rooms. The Philadelphia Methodist hospital, which claims to have delivered all of south Philadelphia's babies for 110 years, began sending expectant mothers 20 blocks north to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital to have their babies. .
             An additional issue for hospitals and communities becomes one of recruiting new doctors to these states and into particular fields in medicine. For example, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Doctor Jerry Schuck states that the malpractice insurance problems are "having a chilling effect on the current crop of medical students" (Metzger, Roger). He goes on to say that although many students in the school's family medicine program are trained to deliver babies, not one plans to offer that service. The cost of insurance for delivering babies, a high risk procedure, is just too much for them.