When Bobbie Cameron became pregnant with her third child, she reluctantly chose a new doctor to oversee her care. Her longtime physician had dropped out of the birthing business because of soaring malpractice insurance rates. Cameron’s daughter, Avery, was born in February 2007. The experience just wasn’t the same. “We had to go to someone we didn’t know, who didn’t know my history, who didn’t know how my last two births went,” said Cameron, 31, a full-time mom in nearby Plain City. Five years after a law trying to reduce the malpractice rates went into effect, Ohio has fewer doctors who deliver babies than at the height of protests about high costs. Ohio had 1,327 doctors listing obstetrics and gynecology as their primary specialty at the end of 2007, a 5 percent decrease from 2002, according to an AP analysis of State Medical Board numbers. The overall number of doctors in Ohio rose during the same time, from about 28,000 to about 30,000. Those figures represent all doctors and not just those in high-risk specialties. The Republican-sponsored 2003 law caps most jury awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases at $350,000 but allows up to $1 million in cases with multiple victims — such as injuries to a mother and baby during a delivery — and injuries considered catastrophic. Supporters of caps had argued that large jury verdicts and frivolous lawsuits were driving up insurance rates and forcing doctors with high-risk specialties such as obstetrics to leave the profession.
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For more information on defending medical malpractice, nursing home and general liability matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at Citron & Associates, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.
