By Colleen Slevin http://www.rockymountainnews.com The Senate on Thursday gave initial backing to a bill that would increase the amount juries can award in some medical malpractice suits, a move Republicans said could make doctors stop practicing and make health care more expensive. Democrats said the bill, backed by trial lawyers, simply returns the law to […]

By Ann Lukits http://www.thewhig.com It took a team of government researchers just five days to discover what Kingstonians have been saying for years: The city doesn’t have nearly enough family doctors. A door-to-door survey of Kingston households by Statistics Canada found that 14.8 per cent of adult men and women – or 13,360 permanent city […]

by Jason Hidalgo http://news.rgj.com The decision by U.S. medical schools to cap enrollment in the ’80s and ’90s is being cited by medical experts as a major factor in the ongoing shortage of surgeons and primary care physicians nationwide. Medical schools implemented the caps because they expected managed care to create a glut of doctors. […]

By The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com We’re troubled by a bill pending in the state Senate that would raise the ceiling on medical malpractice awards — while boosting premiums on malpractice insurance and possibly leading to reduced health care services in already underserved rural areas of Colorado. Senate Bill 164 by Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, […]

by Tom Blackwell, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com Teresa Evans knew that finding a new family doctor would be difficult, but she never expected to have to try out for the privilege. The first doctor the 33-year-old approached made her fill out a detailed questionnaire on her medical condition, then rejected her application without any explanation. She […]

by Chris Rauber San Francisco Business Times http://www.bizjournals.com Pay-for-performance bonus payments from health plans to California medical groups totaled $65 million for 2007, $10 million more than the bonuses distributed in 2006, according to the Integrated Healthcare Association, which designed California’s Pay for Performance program for physicians. The 2007 payments were distributed to medical groups […]

LocumTenens.com ALPHARETTA, GA — 02/28/08 — Physicians need more exposure to practice options and opportunities in rural health care, if recent physician survey results from LocumTenens.com are any indication. When the physician recruiting firm asked respondents who had no rural health care experience why they had never practiced in rural America: — 33% said they’d […]

H. Darr Beiser http://www.usatoday.com NASSAWADOX, Va. — In the modest building that houses Shore Memorial Hospital in this town of about 600 people between the Chesapeake and Hog Island bays, a health care crisis is brewing. It’s a problem rooted in the 1980s and 1990s, when U.S. medical schools put a cap on enrollments, believing […]

by Cindy F. Crawford – Birmingham Business Journal http://www.bizjournals.com Thanks to fewer client accidents in the fourth quarter of 2007, Birmingham’s ProAssurance Corp. reported a net income of $51.4 million, a 30 percent increase from the $35.7 million recorded same time last year. The nation’s fourth largest writer of medical professional liability insurance reported earnings […]