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After more than 50
years of bringing new life into the world, the labor and
delivery unit at Jeanes Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia
closed for good May 31. From now on, expectant mothers will have
to give birth somewhere else, no matter how far the drive or how
dangerous the wait.
Chalk up another
"victory" for personal-injury lawyers and the medical-liability
crisis they have visited upon Pennsylvania.
Jeanes is just the
latest Pennsylvania hospital to end obstetric care due in large
part to medical-liability concerns. During the last 10 years, an
astounding 33 hospital obstetric units have closed across the
state, including 13 in the Philadelphia region.
Because physicians
today work under the constant threat of a lawsuit, insurance
premiums for medical malpractice have skyrocketed to as much as
$200,000 for some obstetricians in the state. The result: One
doctor after another is fleeing the commonwealth - and leaving
mothers and their children without the care they need.
The problem lies with
Pennsylvania's law of joint-and-several liability, which allowsa defendant to be held responsible for 100 percent of the
damages even if he or she is found only 1 percent liable for the
harm. If you think delivering babies is difficult and demanding,
imagine doing it with a figurative team of trial lawyers always
hovering nearby - knowing that the least error, even if it's not
yours, can lead to financial ruin.
Other states have
faced the same problem, and many have found solutions with
commonsense reforms that protect good doctors from predatory
lawsuits.
That would have
happened in Pennsylvania, too, had Gov. Rendell not vetoed
medical-liability reform legislation last year.
Under the bill vetoed
by the governor, courts would have assigned comparative
responsibility, requiring defendants to pay their share of the
liability - but not more than their share. Forty-four states
have already adopted such measures. In each case, state leaders
put the interests of patients and doctors above the interests of
the politically powerful trial bar. And in each case, the
results speak for themselves.
In Texas, for
example, the state medical board minted 2,446 new physicians in
2001. In 2006, that number jumped nearly 65 percent to 4,026.
The main difference? In 2003, the Texas legislature adopted -
and the governor signed - sensible reform legislation to curb
medical-liability lawsuit abuse.
The story in
Pennsylvania is far different. According to one group, the
Politically Active Physicians Association, 3,000 doctors have
left Pennsylvania, curtailed their services, or retired early
during the last four years. Pennsylvania has ranked among the
lowest in the nation for practicing doctors under 35. In 2004,
less than 8 percent of Pennsylvania's doctors-in-training
decided to stay in the state after completing their residencies,
compared with more than 50 percent in 1994.
Every citizen of
Pennsylvania, young and old, is entitled to expect that capable
physicians will be there when they are needed. Yet one by one,
they are moving away or limiting their practices because bad
laws have made the state inhospitable to doctors. So now
mothers-to-be in Northeast Philadelphia are forced to go
elsewhere, sometimes at great risk to their own children.
It's time for Gov.
Rendell to get his priorities straight, stand up to the trial
bar, and act in the interests of patients and their doctors
across the state. |
