DO - Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Anita Showalter, D.O., (‘93) whose practice is largely among
Amish clients, discovered that if she moved her practice just 10
miles to the south in neighboring Holmes County–closer to
the majority of her patients–she could save $75,000 a year on
her liability insurance.
year to cut back, replacing a physician with a midwife.
“The workload is naturally more, but we just couldn’t
afford to pay more,” she says. If insurance premiums
continue to increase, which she says has been occurring
regularly for the past five years, she may even consider
quitting obstetrics and just providing gynecology services.
Physicians also face a complex task of sorting through
insurance premiums based on specialty and location,
regulations, managed care, hospital privileges and a variety
of other issues. Ohio is considered a high-risk state for
malpractice insurance, but insurance companies charge even
higher rates in the southeastern and northeastern quadrants
of the state. Often, managed care and insurance companies
contribute to the problem.
Anita Showalter, D.O. (‘93), whose practice is largely
among Amish clients, noted her premiums only increased
two percent last year. “Still, 2 percent is still a lot if you pay
$150,000 a year,” she says.
Options can be few, though. When Showalter considered
moving her practice a county away after her insurance
premiums jumped two and one-half times in one year, her
insurance carrier was the obstacle. “For some reason, my
insurance company decided to include my county (Wayne),
which is in a rural area with an Amish cliental who tend not
to sue, with northeastern Ohio,” she says, adding that she’s
never been the subject of a lawsuit. But to her surprise,
Showalter discovered that if she moved her practice
just 10 miles to the south in neighboring Holmes
County–closer to the majority of her patients,
actually–she could save $75,000 a year on her liability
insurance. When she questioned her insurance carrier
about the logic of its reasoning, she received no
substantial answer. In the end she stayed put and
paid the price, so she wouldn’t have to switch her
hospital affiliation.
“I feel like physicians have sold the farm,” says
Showalter, who is passionate about the issue. Defensive
medicine gets in the way of good medicine. “If you
have to look at every patient as a potential adversary
in a lawsuit, you lose the trust that is needed between
a physician and patient.”
Showalter believes physicians and hospitals need to
come up with solutions. She says she’d consider the
option of forgoing liability insurance and creating a
national fund to assist patients who encounter legitimate
medical problems needing catastrophic care.
Already, the idea of “going bare” is commonplace in
Florida, so far with little downside, she says.
“ The rising cost of health care
overall has the potential to
bankrupt the country.”
George Abate, D.O.
“We would be saying that we need physicians and
hospitals and to give them the room to be human,”
she says.
“We need a national outrage,” Showalter says. “The
people not being treated fairly are the physicians and
the hospitals. Can we really afford to continue?”
If you ask Zurovchak, she’ll say it’s not just physicians.
“I don’t think the public realizes how much this affects
them. They read about it and hear about it talked and
tossed about in the news media, but until we say we
have to make changes in our practice, the average person
doesn’t realize that means their doctor,” she says.
TODAY’S
DO
summer 2006 17