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Desert Springs Hospital to close maternity ward
Las Vegas Review Journal ^ | Saturday, May 24, 2003 | JOELLE BABULA

Posted on 05/24/2003 6:48:35 AM PDT by friendly

Desert Springs Hospital will shut down its maternity center at the end of the summer because the facility has lost more than half its obstetricians.

The closure comes just months after hospital officials closed the orthopedic department and struggled to find enough surgeons to care for emergency room patients. Health officials blame the closure on the state's medical malpractice insurance troubles, which have forced some doctors to leave the state or curtail their speciality services.

Larry Matheis, executive director of the Nevada State Medical Association, said the closure is another example of the fallout from the state's medical liability troubles.

"This is just an example of the continuing erosion of the medical system in Southern Nevada," Matheis said.

(Excerpt) Read more at reviewjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: doctors; hospitals; lawyers; shysters
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Trauma centers, emergency rooms, and obstetrics are rapidly disappearing around the the US in order to enrich the corrupy shyster industry. The democrat party at work.
1 posted on 05/24/2003 6:48:35 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
corrupy = corrupt
2 posted on 05/24/2003 6:49:09 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
If a physician delivers 200 babies a year, it costs him $500.00 insurance fees for each kid he delivers.
3 posted on 05/24/2003 6:54:23 AM PDT by RLK
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To: friendly
Well, here we go again! This city can expect a very nasty note from Presidente Fox. Where are the wetback senoritas supposed to go to have their babies? Dallas, Houston, El Paso, and San Antonio are just soooo crowded and the food isn't as good as it once was.

It just seems to me that the illegal alien criminal association will have to sue to keep this facility open. Why should the taxpayers of this city not have the priveledge of paying for the maternity costs of illegal aliens?

4 posted on 05/24/2003 6:55:32 AM PDT by Tacis
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To: friendly
I know that my doctor I had when I first got married thirty years ago was a GP who also delivered babies. A few years later he stopped delivering babies, too much for malpractice insurance. So he just was GP after that. I remember way back then thinking malpractice cases and shyters should be STOPPED!
5 posted on 05/24/2003 6:55:48 AM PDT by buffyt (Can you say President Hillary, Mistress of Darkness? Me Neither!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: friendly
The docs may have finally found a way to beat the sharks -- leave the states where the sharks swim free.

Shutting down medical services is serious business. Eventually the public may wake up from its stupor and do something about the sharks. Let's hope so.
6 posted on 05/24/2003 6:59:27 AM PDT by Semi Civil Servant
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To: RLK
If a physician delivers 200 babies a year, it costs him $500.00 insurance fees for each kid he delivers.

200 deliveries a year is a brutal high risk, assembly-line practice. 100-125 is more reasonable and proper for an OB-GYN.

More accurate math: At $150,000 to $200,000 for the lawyer tax, this works out to up to $2000 per delivery for a normal practice.

Result? No more obstetricians. Just like Las Vegas.

7 posted on 05/24/2003 7:04:39 AM PDT by friendly
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To: Tacis
Illegals are annihilating the trauma and emergency room sysytems of this nation.
8 posted on 05/24/2003 7:06:15 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
Lawyers will say it is all about bad doctors and "big insurance". Lawyers enrich themselves at the expense of the US.
9 posted on 05/24/2003 7:08:36 AM PDT by Hacksaw
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To: Semi Civil Servant
The docs may have finally found a way to beat the sharks -- leave the states where the sharks swim free. Shutting down medical services is serious business. Eventually the public may wake up from its stupor and do something about the sharks. Let's hope so.

Believe it or not, the lawyers don't care. (surprise!) The money they steal is more important to these greedy, evil shysters, than understanding that they are killing the goose that layed the golden eggs.

The lawyer industry is violating the primary rule of successful parasites: You don't suck ALL of the life out of your victims.

10 posted on 05/24/2003 7:11:26 AM PDT by friendly
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To: Hacksaw
Lawyers will say it is all about bad doctors and "big insurance". Lawyers enrich themselves at the expense of the US.

The democrats clearly plan to enrich themselves (or at least their trial lawyer constituency and chief campaign contributors), destroy the trauma and obstetrical system, and have the predictable gall to demand a federal takeover and universal health system to "correct" the non-functional, lawyer-ravaged system. I am absolutely convinced this will be evil, calculating democrats and lawyer-politician Hillary's agenda and main selling point when the time comes.

I think that the trial lawyers are only too happy to be a part of the democrat effort to destroy the health care system, so that the democrats will then trot themselves out of the shadows to claim to be saviors!

11 posted on 05/24/2003 7:15:36 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
Folks, get used to it. If you live in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, Missisippi, just to name a few, this is going to be the rule rather than the exception.

"The current malpractice lottery is akin to a police officer issuing speeding tickets to good drivers, while the speeders go scott free".
12 posted on 05/24/2003 7:15:55 AM PDT by JusPasenThru (We're through being cool (you can say that again, Dad))
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To: JusPasenThru
Folks, get used to it. If you live in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, Missisippi, just to name a few, this is going to be the rule rather than the exception.

Absolutely true: Floriduh's statewide trauma system is in free fall collapse as we speak, for example.

One maddening thing (for the docs) about the med malpractice industry is that the suits and payouts generally bear no relationship to competence.

Thus doctors who agree see the most high risk (sickest) patients are the most likely to be sued. Very sick patients are more likely to have adverse outcomes. Emergency trauma cases (often performed under insane battlefield type conditions) are the ones where sponges (pads to soak up blood) and other objects are left behind, something the democrats will never tell you.

Other shyster scams include the gold mine (for crooked lawyers) with mega-bucks from the neurosurgeons (brain injury almost always has some residual brain damage, by definition) and obstetricans (congenital blameless birth defects equals lawyer yachts and French Riviera condos)

13 posted on 05/24/2003 7:29:35 AM PDT by friendly
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To: Hacksaw
IN 34-51-3-4: Limitations on punitive damage award
A punitive damage award may not be more than the greater of:
(1) three (3) times the amount of compensatory damages awarded in the action; or
(2) fifty thousand dollars ($ 50,000).

IN 34-51-3-6: Payment of punitive damage award to clerk of court
... (b) Upon receiving the payment... the clerk of the court shall:
(1) pay the person to whom punitive damages were awarded twenty-five percent (25%) of the punitive damage award; and
(2) pay the remaining seventy-five percent (75%) of the punitive damage award to the treasurer of state, who shall deposit the funds into the violent crime victims compensation fund established by IC 5-2-6.1-40.

Compensatory damages, which reimburse a victim for the economic loss, is not capped, but punitive damages, where the shyster-lawyer makes his living, are. Not only that, but 75% of the punitive damages don't even go to the victim, severely limiting the number of claimants that are looking for their "lottery-jackpot".

14 posted on 05/24/2003 7:32:52 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: friendly
Post 14 is Indiana state law, by the way.
15 posted on 05/24/2003 7:36:44 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: Teacher317
Indiana sounds a good place to be a patient: Attracts lots of doctor refugees from lawyer infested hellhole states.
16 posted on 05/24/2003 7:46:44 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
My gyn/obst uncle in a Chicago suburb gave up the obstetrics part of his practice and stayed in the gynecology end of it.....due to high malpractice insurance gouging.

It was too bad, he and his late doctor father delivered half the babies in that town.

It's not just a Southwest problem, it's a country-wide scandal. Everyone sees it except the politicians beholden to the attorney malpractice money machine.

Leni

17 posted on 05/24/2003 7:57:31 AM PDT by MinuteGal (Last call for fabulous "FReeps Ahoy" cruise. Signing up now means never having to say you're sorry!)
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To: MinuteGal
It is a crime when shysters are above the law. The loss of your uncle's practice was a crime against not only him, but the people in his community. But the lawyers got their yachts, that's all that counts.
18 posted on 05/24/2003 8:03:46 AM PDT by friendly
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To: friendly
From this webpage:

Dr. Carter noted that OB/GYNs in Florida pay over $200,000 annually per physician for liability insurance, in Pennsylvania the cost is $100,000, and in Indiana the cost of insurance is about $20,000.
"Where do you think a physician is going to practice?," she asked.

19 posted on 05/24/2003 8:08:39 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: MinuteGal
Post 19 applies to your post as well.
20 posted on 05/24/2003 8:09:08 AM PDT by Teacher317
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