The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is currently looking for insurance companies that would provide medical malpractice insurance to Commonwealth Health Center physicians. CHC doctors used to be under the protection of the Government Liability Act until it was ruled unconstitutional by a trial court.<\/p>\n
At a CHCC board meeting last Sept. 13, legal counsel Nancy Gottfried told the board that all CNMI insurance companies were asked what it would take in order for them to offer medical malpractice to CHC\u2019s physicians, \u201cbased on no substitution of parties, no damages cap, allow punitive damages and allow jury trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
The search for malpractice insurance for the CHC doctors stemmed from a malpractice lawsuit filed by couple Remedio Elameto and Pedro Pua against the CNMI government and doctors Gary Ramsey and Rajee Iyer. <\/p>\n
In a statement, CHCC CEO Esther Mu\u00f1a said there is no actual medical malpractice insurance for physicians at the hospital. \u201cThe physicians that we have recruited usually ask that question when they come to work at CHCC because they know that they cannot buy medical insurance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The usual explanation as to why no medical malpractice insurance is readily available in the CNMI is because the islands\u2019 risk pool is \u201ctoo small.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you calculate what we have\u2014doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners\u2014then add the private providers, we only have some 50 [doctors] and that is a small number. That is why we don\u2019t have enough risk pool for insurance companies to take in,\u201d Muna said.<\/p>\n
The Government Liability Act stands in place of medical insurance for CHC doctors in the CNMI. However, the Act\u2019s constitutionality is currently being questioned and is now under litigation.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a is hopeful that CHCC will be accommodated by insurance companies. \u201cMarkets change and maybe there is really somebody out there who can accommodate us but, again, this will not be our first time to inquire about insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Gottfried, there are many challenges when operating a hospital in a remote island but they will be investigating the possibility of obtaining malpractice insurance for all doctors practicing here. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to hear from the insurance companies what conditions they would like to see in the request for proposals. In the event we don\u2019t get responses, we will be following up by phone calls,\u201d Gottfried said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is currently looking for insurance companies that would provide medical malpractice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[666,26,15581,12734],"class_list":["post-260485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chcc","tag-cnmi","tag-gary-ramsey","tag-government-liability-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}