While the administration and staff at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen supported the doctors’ boycott, which began Monday throughout the state, officials assured that the hospital’s emergency room facilities “were not compromised” by the organized work stoppage, aimed to force state legislators to institute law that will halt the rising costs of malpractice insurance.
According to Eurice Rojas, the spokesman for the medical center, emergency room visits were “50 percent higher than normal,” on Wednesday, the third day of the organized boycott.
“On Monday, our emergency rooms were a little over volume,” Rojas said. “By Tuesday, it picked up a lot and by Wednesday, we were extremely busy. We were still able to attend to people in a timely basis and had a lot of people coming in, getting treated and released. We had more than enough staff on hand to accommodate the volume. We never reached a crisis standpoint because we were properly staffed.”
Rojas said that once doctors received word that their patients were brought in and were being admitted, they paid visits to their patients.
“Patients were never left unattended,” Rojas said. “If a patient was brought in because of an emergency, the doctors came in as well.”
While it was business as usual inside the medical center Wednesday, physicians who work at the hospital and throughout the state tried to keep the pressure on state legislators to place limits on the awards given for “pain and suffering” in malpractice cases.
According to published reports, negotiations were ongoing between the physicians and leaders from the State Assembly to reach a compromise, perhaps with the limit given in malpractice cases raised from the initially proposed $250,000 to $300,000.
The compromise was apparently gathering steam among bipartisan members of the assembly and the bill could be introduced to the assembly as early as Monday.
Another step in the right direction for doctors came Wednesday, when the state ordered a major malpractice insurance provider, Zurich American Insurance Company of Illinois, which provides insurance to approximately 131 obstetricians in New Jersey, to cut back on rates that had doubled over the course of the last year.
Gov. Jim McGreevey also announced Wednesday that he supported a state fund to help keep the malpractice premiums down.
However, as of press time Thursday, nothing official had been announced in terms of a settlement.
Two organized protests drew several hundred physicians, including one in Trenton where 5,000 doctors marched, pleading with state legislators to make the necessary moves toward reform.
Others were staged at Jersey Shore Medical Center, in Trenton, outside the offices of State Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge), the co-chairman of the State Health Committee, and State Senator Byron Baer in Hackensack.
While there were no picket lines or protests at Palisades Medical Center, Rojas said that several of the hospital’s doctors participated in the rally in Trenton.
“There was a bus that left from the hospital filled with our doctors,” Rojas said. “They feel their voices were heard.”
Rojas said that the doctors’ walkout was slated to continue at Palisades through the weekend, although some doctors around the state had returned to their offices by Thursday.
Personally, Rojas thought that the work stoppage was successful. “I think it got the ears of legislators throughout the state,” Rojas said. “The doctors collectively raised public awareness about the cause and there is now a grass roots movement, driven by the patients.”
But Rojas knows that the fight is far from over.
“Just like Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over,’ ” Rojas said. “It’s not going to be settled for a while. But this was a good start.”