BY LARRY RAMER
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — Four doctors who operate a practice in the Kilmer Plaza, Union Hill Road, are asking their patients to help them shoulder the rising costs of medical malpractice insurance.
“We are asking each of our patients to make voluntarily [a] $25 payment annually to help our practice offset the malpractice costs and help us to continue to provide care to you in a consistent and reliable way,” stated a letter which was signed by doctors Richard Eiges, Michael Stark, Joseph Romanella and Regina Omrani of Jersey Shore Associates and sent to their patients.
Jersey Shore Associates is an internal medicine practice.
The practice’s malpractice insurance premiums have soared from $25,000 to $90,000 over the past four years, Romanella said in an interview with the News Transcript. Romanella said three doctors in the area whom he knows personally have retired early, moved or closed their practices in the face of rising insurance premiums.
Not all patients should pay the $25 voluntary annual fee, Romanella said.
“We’re not looking for patients to respond if we see them one time a year,” he explained, “but for chronic patients who see their doctor three to five times a year and have established a relationship with their doctor, a one-time $25 fee in order to keep their doctor is probably a worthwhile investment.”
Romanella said if the practice does not receive an adequate response to its request for help, the doctors may have to stop accepting certain insurance plans that do not adequately cover their costs.
He said the doctors may also have to reduce their office staff. That, in turn, would increase the amount of time patients have to wait for appointments to be made, immediate care to be provided and telephones to be answered, the doctor said.
“Decreased staff inevitably affects patient care,” he said.
Asked what could be done by the government to stem the tide of the insurance premium increases, Romanella said, “One thing we need to do is appoint an independent counsel to review malpractice cases and make sure the case in question is malpractice. There are so many frivolous cases.”
Some of what he called frivolous lawsuits involve cases in which patients may have died through no fault of the doctor.
“Patients think a bad outcome defines malpractice, but sometimes a bad disease — not malpractice — is what causes a bad outcome,” the doctor said.
Even the most frivolous lawsuits can have an effect on malpractice insurance premiums, Romanella explained.
“After a physician is named in a malpractice lawsuit he has to contact his insurance carrier and the carrier has to pay a lawyer to defend the doctor even if the lawsuit is frivolous,” Romanella said, adding that doctors win most malpractice lawsuits.
He said the government should also take steps to ensure that expert medical witnesses actually have expertise in the fields in which they are testifying.
“If the government does these things, we may not need caps” on malpractice judgments, the doctor added.
Romanella was asked his opinion of a bill proposed by state Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) that would prohibit doctors from charging HMO members extra fees — in addition to their co-payments — for various services such as making telephone calls and answering e-mails.
“Partnering with pharmacies, retaining an answering service and answering phone calls quickly costs us money. We’re not being reimbursed for these services,” Romanella said. “The problem is that insurance companies are not covering the cost of what we’re doing. I would like to know how much Sen. Vitale gets reimbursed in whatever business he’s in. I would keep an open mind about [the bill] … but Joe Vitale may not understand how medicine is practiced.”