Though rising malpractice premiums have affected healthcare services in some areas, they have not led to widespread access problems, according to a new report from the General Accounting Office. The report, released to the public on Friday, also looks at caps on non-economic damages and finds they generally limit growth in premiums and claims payments.
For its report, the GAO reviewed Medicare data and contacted providers that have reportedly been affected in five states with reported malpractice problems (Florida, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and West Virginia) and in four states without reported problems (California, Colorado, Minnesota and Montana).
The agency says it found some "reduced access to hospital-based services affecting emergency surgery and newborn deliveries," but the problems were "in scattered, often rural, areas," where it also identified other long-standing causes for access problems.
For example, the report says that since three of five orthopedic surgeons left the only hospital in a rural Pennsylvania county in 2002, the hospital no longer has full orthopedic on-call coverage. Also, pregnant women in rural central Mississippi must travel 65 miles for deliveries because family practitioners at the local hospital stopped covering obstetrics due to high malpractice premiums. In both instances, however, the GAO says problems operating in rural areas also contributed to difficulties recruiting physicians.
The report adds that while some physicians reported reducing certain services that are at risk for litigation, such as spinal surgeries and mammograms, the GAO did not find access to these services widely affected.
It concludes that "many of the reported provider actions were not substantiated or did not affect access to health care on a widespread basis."
For more information, go to www.gao.gov