"Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." Remember that quote from our decider-in-chief? Of course you do. As most things that come out of his mouth, this quote sounded utterly ridiculous. But getting past the fact that our president can't very often put his words together so that they sound even remotely intelligent, the idea behind it did make sense - malpractice insurance is making it tough for doctors these days. I hadn't thought much about this until my wife recently had a regular checkup scheduled with her ob/gyn. The doctor who delivered both of our daughters, who are fast approaching the ages of 6 and 8, which means my wife has been seeing him for almost 9 years now, as have several of my friends. But when my wife called up to make an appointment, the only hours he offered were after 4pm, 2 days during the work week, or early Saturdays. Not the most convenient hours, since my wife likes to be able to visit her doctors without dragging along the kids (so the weekdays weren't good), and she didn't want to take time away from the kids on a Saturday. But she had no choice, since this was all he was offering. But why?
When she went in to see the doctor, she asked him what was up. Turns out he gave up all of his OB patients and was now teaching at a hospital, taking only GYN patients. Why? Because he said his malpractice insurance premium was $150,000 a year. Now I admit that I don't know how much revenue a typical ob/gyn takes in on Long Island (where we live), but $150,000 seems like a pretty hefty bit of overhead. And if you figure in staff salaries and the cost of maintaining a physical office space (rent, utilities, etc.), it's got to cost a pretty penny to be a doctor these days, though I imagine the payoff is still pretty good.
I don't envy the man and don't blame him for cutting back, especially when he told my wife that he had been sued by a former patient 5 years after he delivered her baby because the child showed developmental problems and "he must have done something." That's apparently what the woman's lawyer said. The doctor won the case, but it left him a little less enamored of the practice.
According to an article in today's Newsday (the main newspaper for Long Island) (http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcov0218,0,7238563.story), one ob/gyn said he had to do 64 deliveries just to pay his malpractice insurance. Again, not being familiar with the intricacies of an ob/gyn practice, I don't know how many deliveries one doctor could conceivably handle in one year, what with office visits and gyn patients, but I have to think that that's a lot of deliveries. I'm familiar with the annual calculation of how many days the average person has to work just to pay their taxes, but given the added expense of malpractice insurance, I have to imagine an ob/gyn has to work that much longer in order just to break even.
Fortunately for my wife and I, we're done having kids, so we don't need to worry about finding a new OB doctor, but my wife's doctor was good, and he also did a lot of fertility work, so Long Island is short another highly qualified ob/gyn.
Now I'm a lawyer, but I'm not a litigator and I'm not going to defend litigators, especially when I hear of cases like the one mentioned above. I think litigators often bring cases just because they know they can get a decent settlement even if they don't win, or because, when they do win, the awards are extraordinary, so even a low winning percentage means a huge payout overall. I also think the insurers are at fault as they are all to quick to offer settlements because they can then hike up the doctor's premium (I'm not a big fan of insurance companies, by the way). I don't think capping awards is the way to settle this, but I think harsher penalties on lawyers who file frivolous suits or who have a propensity for bringing questionable claims, and more governance of insurance companies is probably a good place to start. But I also think we as a society have become too litigation happy, and we need to do something about that too.
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