 "Photo: Brian Dominiecki/Staff Photographer")
Hundreds of local doctors demonstrated in front of two New Brunswick hospitals yesterday afternoon to raise awareness for reforms that they say are critical to the survival of their profession.
The doctors assembled at Saint Peter's Hospital at 11:00 a.m. yesterday then marched to RWJUH to join another hundred of their colleagues.
The doctors are protesting because medical malpractice insurance has skyrocketed recently. Insurance trends have forced many, especially obstetricians, to either leave the state, close their practices or greatly curtail their services to their patients, local neurologist Patrick Garney said.
The local demonstration was a part of a statewide effort to raise awareness and receive attention from politicians in Trenton, Garney said. "This is an awful terrible thing. We don't want to have to stand out here and march," he said. "Our goal is to take care of patients. ... We are marching for our patients."
Attorney to Health professionals Robert Conroy said this demonstration was apart of a "national revolution." In order to reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, Conroy said, there must be legislative action.
The two main goals of local doctors are to place limitations on the awarding of malpractice claims and a statute of reasonable limitations for old claims -- approximately 20 years, Conroy said. Sanctions against frivolous lawsuits and expert testimony provided in these lawsuits are other steps toward a solution to the problem, he said.
The doctors agreed that the biggest reason for the insurance spike stems from large pain and suffering awards in the verdicts of malpractice claims. Garney said the best solution would be to cap the highest possible award for non-economic claims in a verdict to $250,000. Garney said a victim of malpractice would still be compensated for his medical bills and lost wages, but would be limited in receiving no more than the fixed amount for anything else in the judgment like pain and suffering.
"The problem lies in the exorbitant reward for pain and suffering [judgments]," Garney said. "Frivolous claims add to the cost of the whole system."
Over the past three years, Garney's insurance has gone up 150 percent, comparable to the figures that most physicians are dealing with. Garney said that doctors are not unionized and therefore had to coordinate with doctors throughout the state to accomplish the demonstration. The doctors did not endanger the health of their patients by participating in the demonstration. "We will still do our day to day operations [at the hospital]," he said. "We'll just do them at night."
RWJUH and St. Peter's Infectious disease doctor Ted Lowie said that doctors from all over the state would be demonstrating at the statehouse in Trenton and at the office of NJ Senator Vitale over the course of the next two days.
Family physician Paul Gwozde, said his insurance has also been affected, but not nearly as much as obstetricians. "All the doctors must stand together to make change," he said.
Ginny Sciorra, a spokeswoman for St. Peter's Hospital, said that the hospital drew a considerable increase of patients, because most people could not reach their local doctors and pediatricians. Sciorra said however that the demonstration did not have an impact on any areas of the Hospital and that the emergency room was "more than fully staffed."
Spokesman for RWJUH Joseph Patella said the number of operations scheduled yesterday and today are about half the average number of operations performed because physicians were canceling elective surgeries.
"Our main concern today is taking care of patients," he said. Everyone involved "must find a way to resolve the situation in a more permanent fashion."
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