• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Heart Surgeons' Boycott Will Not Put Patients at Risk, Official Says

Posted on: Friday, 23 December 2005, 00:00 CST

By FROM STAFF REPORTS

Charleston Area Medical Center officials said today care will continue as usual at its trauma center after seven heart surgeons told the hospital they will no longer come to CAMC's General Hospital.

The doctors contend they and their patients are not being treated fairly.

CAMC officials today said the public isn't at risk because of the doctors' decision, which the doctors announced Monday and which affects their service at General Hospital only.

"If you have a heart attack tonight, you are going to Memorial (Hospital)," said Dale Witt, CAMC spokesman. "If you are in a car wreck with multiple injuries, and one of those injuries is a heart injury, you'll go to General.

"That only happens about once a month," Witt said. "But when it does, we'll have a cardiologist there, anyway. And the trauma team could still make a decision, if the heart problem is the most serious one, that the patient should go over to Memorial."

The doctors say CAMC officials will not provide the proper tools to make the trauma center safe for heart surgery patients.

But Witt said General was reviewed by the American College of Surgeons and certified as a level one trauma center. Those inspectors had no concerns about the equipment, he said.

"This is absolutely not a safety issue for patients," Witt said.

Hospital officials say the heart surgeons actually are upset because they don't get the same amount of on-call pay as other doctors at General Hospital. On-call pay is for time when the doctors must be available if necessary.

Hospital administrators say they have tried to meet the doctors' demands as much as the law and practicality will allow.

General Hospital's trauma center treats injuries such as car accidents and shootings. Doctors in many fields rotate being "on call." The hospital expects on-call doctors to stay within 15 to 20 minutes of the trauma center in case they are needed.

Dr. Nestor Dans and the other heart surgeons say the hospital pays other physicians thousands of dollars per day just to be on call, but pays the heart surgeons nothing, even when they do come in.

Witt said the primary factor is how seldom the heart surgeons are called in compared to other specialists.

"The difference is there is an extremely high demand in the trauma center for neurosurgeons - and we only have four of those - and orthopedic surgeons," Witt said. "They are on call once every four days. We pay them whether they come in or not, and they usually come in every day."

CAMC President and CEO David Ramsey said the hospital cannot legally pay the heart surgeons the amount of money they want - because they don't come in enough.

In 2004, of the 2,557 trauma patients at CAMC, 828 were admitted for orthopedics and 197 for neurosurgery, according to information from the National Trauma Data Bank maintained by the American College of Surgeons.

One patient was admitted for heart treatment.

On-call pay is federally regulated by fair market value, or how often doctors come in and the general pay range for that field.

CAMC offered the doctors $2,000 for every time they actually come in, but they refused, Ramsey said.

"Our legal advice is what they are asking us to do is against the law," Ramsey said. "We cannot pay them at a level that is not at fair market value."

The doctors sued CAMC over the pay, but the case will not go before a judge until February, according to Karen Miller, the heart surgeons' attorney. She argues that the federal guidelines for on- call pay do not apply to this situation.

Dans said that since heart surgeons do not come in a lot, CAMC's offer of $2,000 per appearance was not enough to cover the expenses of being on call throughout the year.

"Court was the last resort to begin with. (It) is a long, drawn- out process, and, as far as we know, none of the changes we asked for are being made," Dans said. "We've come to the point of utter frustration. We just want resolution with the hospital."

In the Monday letters to Dr. Glenn Crotty Jr., CAMC's executive vice president and chief operating officer, one of the doctors wrote, "Your treatment to private practice physicians who do not act as your puppet is deplorable."

Crotty in turn wrote a letter Tuesday to West Virginia Emergency Medical Services - which oversees hospital emergency rooms - quoting a report from the American College of Surgeons that said the tools heart surgeons need at CAMC General are already there.

CAMC's Medical Staff Committee has passed a resolution saying that CAMC General's heart surgery tools should be made equal to those at CAMC Memorial and that all doctors should be paid equal on- call pay.

Dans said the hospital's concentration on the on-call pay is a red herring.

"I do not mind no one getting paid. It is not about the money, it is about the fairness of the treatment," he said. "We are talking about health issues and they do not want to listen."

Source: Charleston Daily Mail

More News in this Category