Only five doctors notify board of leaving

Monday, March 4, 2002 | 10:57 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Despite talk that the state will lose scores of doctors, only five physicians have notified the state Board of Medical Examiners they will give up their licenses because of the growing medical malpractice insurance problem in Southern Nevada.

"It's a very extreme step," Larry Matheis, executive director of the Nevada State Medical Association, said this morning. "It's like you've been in an automobile accident and you give up your driver's license."

Doctors have threatened to leave Nevada because of rising medical malpractice insurance premiums. St. Paul Co., which was the biggest insurer of doctors in Nevada, announced in December it would stop offering medical malpractice coverage. That has left doctors in Southern Nevada scrambling to find new coverage and facing rate increases double or triple what they are now paying.

State Insurance Commissioner Alice Molasky-Arman was holding a hearing today to determine whether there is adequate insurance available for the doctors. If she finds there is not, she can allow state doctors to form their own company.

Matheis said that the five doctors who have relinquished their licenses are only the start.

"That's about what we would expect," he said. "For the most part, we've been hearing from physicians in Southern Nevada since about the second week of January. If five have gone so far as to relinquish their licenses, that's the first wave of what we fear will be a large number."

The five planning to leave were from Southern Nevada and are among 3,520 active licensed doctors in the state, Larry Lessly, executive director of the examiners board, said.

At the same time Robert Frantz, financial manager for the board, said there's been an increase in the number of physicians applying to practice in Nevada since last fall, when the applications dipped. He said he couldn't specifically give numbers but noted in one recent week 10 doctors sought licensing.

That number may have been affected by the medical examiners' office's focus last fall to license respiratory therapists. He said the office may have fallen behind in sending applications to doctors who needed licensing.

Now the rate of applications is about normal, Frantz said.

But that's not necessarily adequate, Matheis said.

"Normal has left us being 47th in the country in physician population," Matheis said. "There's been a lot of effort in the recruitment of physicians.

"The big test will come in June, July and August, when you have physicians entering the job force. That's when you would normally have the large number of application for licenses. That's when I would expect to see some leveling off, some reduction from past years."