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medpundit |
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Thursday, January 02, 2003At least 39 surgeons walked off the job at four hospitals in West Virginia on Wednesday to protest rising medical malpractice insurance costs, officials said. The hospitals are all in Wheeling, in the northern part of the state sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania. They now must transfer emergency surgeries elsewhere and cancel planned procedures until the doctors end the strike, which they have scheduled to do at the end of the month, officials said. The surgeons are of all types - general, orthopedic, and cardiac. They all asked for leaves of absences for thirty days from their hospital duties. No word on who's looking after their patients already in the hospital, but a West Virginia newspaper has these details about the walk-out: Wheeling Hospital, Ohio Valley Medical Center, Weirton Medical Center and Reynolds Memorial Hospital all have surgeons who have requested leaves of absence to start the new year. Eighteen surgeons at Wheeling Hospital, 12 from OVMC, seven at Reynolds and four at Weirton Medical Center have requested 30-day leaves of absence. The exact number of surgeons protesting is not known, as many doctors have privileges at more than one facility. Wheeling Hospital has lost all but one surgeon, as three general surgeons requested leave on Monday. Unless something changes, the hospital will not offer any surgery after Wednesday. You know, this kind of thing would have been unthinkable as recently as a year ago. Doctors in the United States just didn’t go on strike. Who would we strike against, after all? Most of us are self-employed. But, the malpractice insurance premiums have gotten so untenable, that there’s no choice for some of the high risk specialties. It’s ironic that a lot of the West Virginia surgeons are still doing surgery across the river in Ohio, where malpractice insurance premiums are also considered exorbitant. posted by Sydney on 1/02/2003 07:29:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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