Married just a year, eleven weeks pregnant, and experiencing complications, Laurie Peel needed immediate medical attention. She and her husband had just moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and she did not yet have an ob/gyn. As she searched for a doctor, she found that despite the high quality of health care available in that community, no doctors would accept a patient like her in the midst of a high-risk pregnancy. Finally, Dr. John Schmitt, a leading physician in the community, agreed to accept Laurie as a patient.
As Dr. Schmitt cared for her during a heartbreaking miscarriage, and ultimately the birth of a child, Laurie forged a relationship with Dr. Schmitt that “was everything one could hope for in a doctor.” Unfortunately, last year Dr. Schmitt had to abandon the “outstanding practice he had made his life’s work” by the crippling cost of medical malpractice insurance. He told his patients that he “could no longer practice medicine the way he wanted to, and always had.” The medical liability crisis has deprived Laurie and all of Dr. Schmitt’s patients of his expert, compassionate care.
Please click here to read Laurie's Testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=600&wit_id=1597
Tony and Leanne Dyess
On July 5, 2002, Tony Dyess was returning from work in Gulfport, Mississippi when he was involved in a single car accident. His severe head injuries required immediate attention. Tragically, the hospital had no specialist available who could provide Tony with the care he urgently needed. Why? Because the specialists in his community had been driven out of their practices by the high cost of medical malpractice insurance, or had seen their coverage terminated when their national insurers went out of business.
Tony and Leanne Dyess, and their children, paid the price for the medical liability crisis. If Tony had received immediate care from a specialist capable of putting a shunt into his brain to drain the swelling, he would have recovered from his injuries. But instead, Tony had to wait six hours to be airlifted to a University Medical Center. The six hours made a lifetime of difference for the Dyess family. Tony Dyess – once an energetic entrepreneur, loving husband, and devoted father – now suffers from permanent brain damage that has left him mentally incompetent and unable to care for himself or his family. His wife must be mother and father to their children, and shoulder a lifetime burden of care for the husband she loves.
Please click here to read Leanne's Testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=600&wit_id=1598
Norman Shriver
A year ago, Norman Shriver needed surgery to repair a spinal injury. The neurosurgeon who had previously cared for him had moved to Chicago, and as he searched for a new doctor, he learned that rising malpractice insurance rates in his home state of Pennsylvania had driven many of the surgeons who were qualified to perform the surgery he needed out of the state. After a long search, Norman gave up and traveled to Chicago, where he underwent a successful surgical procedure.
Upon returning to his home outside Philadelphia, however, he developed complications that required further surgical care. The hospital near his home would not perform the surgery he needed (to clean out an infection) because of liability fears; Norman finally had to be transferred to a large teaching hospital in Philadelphia to be cared for by surgeons there. Later, he developed a wound that required surgery. That surgery resulted in an infection, as well. The hospital's fear of liability, and the temporary loss of malpractice insurance by his primary surgeon, subjected Norman to needless uncertainties and required him to find yet another doctor to handle his care.
Norman Shriver counts himself among the lucky, because he emerged from these health crises "without loss of life." But he is concerned that, "good doctors have left the area because of rising medical malpractice rates, and the ones that remain need to consider the risks of liability before the risk to my health."
Please click here to read Norman's Statement.
Mary Rasar
The health care access crisis has had a devastating effect on Mary Rasar and her family. Mary's father, Jim "Fisty" Lawson, age 59, had just returned from a visit with her and other family members in California when he was injured in an automobile accident at the airport in his hometown of Las Vegas. With proper emergency care, Fisty would have recovered from his injuries. The medical liability crisis, however, had forced the only Level 1 Trauma center in Nevada – located at the University's Medical Center -- to close its doors just ten days before the accident. The reason? Rising liability costs had led insurers to drop malpractice coverage for high risk specialists, which in turn put the medical center out of business. Instead of receiving the care he urgently needed, Fisty Lawson died at a nearby hospital while awaiting air transport to the nearest Level 1 Trauma Center, more than one hour away.
Fisty's untimely death has had a tragic impact on his family. It has left his aging mother without his care and companionship. It has left his two nephews, to whom he was a father figure, without his support and leadership. And it has left his daughter looking for answers. "I don't blame the doctors," says Mary. "I know they did all they could to keep practicing medicine, but ultimately it wasn't their choice. I just never thought this crisis would reach our family so personally, and I hope no one else has to suffer as we have."
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