News in brief - June 7, 2004

New Jersey society sues over release of malpractice information - Class-action trial date pushed back - California hospital may lose third residency - New Jersey establishes stem cell research institute

New Jersey society sues over release of malpractice information

The Medical Society of New Jersey filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Newark to stop the public release of malpractice settlements and judgments against the state's physicians.

New Jersey planned to release this physician information to The Recordnewspaper in Hackensack, N.J. The state's Division of Consumer Affairs was set to post malpractice histories of doctors on a Web site in June.

The medical society's suit claims the state's 2003 Health Care Consumer Information Act, which will create the physician profile site, is unconstitutional because it permits distribution of retrospective confidential settlement information in malpractice cases. That contradicts federal law prohibiting state legislation from interfering with contracts between private individuals, the society said.

A judge will hear arguments from the society and the state on June 7.

Class-action trial date pushed back

Physician class-action lawsuits against the nation's largest HMOs are now set to go to trial March 14, 2005. The federal judge in Florida overseeing the litigation pushed back the trial that previously was set to begin in September.

The two sides are scheduled to wrap up fact discovery by June 1, and expert reports are due June 28.

Medical societies and individual physicians sued health plans in federal courts nationwide, accusing them of unfairly reimbursing physicians for the services they provide to the plans' subscribers. The lawsuits were all sent to Judge Federico A. Moreno at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami.

Aetna Inc. and CIGNA HealthCare have settled the lawsuits physicians filed against them. Moreno is still overseeing similar class-action lawsuits against Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Coventry Health Care Inc., Humana Inc., Prudential Insurance Co. of America, United Healthcare Inc. and WellPoint Health Networks Inc. Insurers are still waiting for an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on whether the lawsuits will go forward as class actions.

California hospital may lose third residency

Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles could lose its third residency program. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which pulled the accreditation of the hospital's surgery and radiology programs, now has the neonatology program in its sights.

The surgery and radiology residencies will close July 1. Neonatology, which is appealing withdrawal of its accreditation, would close June 2005 if the appeal is denied.

The reason for the latest penalty was a lack of cases to give residents adequate training, according to the Los Angeles County Dept. of Health Services, which has taken over daily operation of the hospital since a string of deaths occurred in 2003 under questionable circumstances.

The hospital will have 16 resident programs once surgery and radiology are closed.

New Jersey establishes stem cell research institute

New Jersey became the first state to publicly fund stem cell research with the establishment last month of an institute to be operated jointly by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers University.

The institute will be built in New Brunswick, near the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. The state is providing $6.5 million, and Gov. James E. McGreevey said he expects more than $20 million will be raised in public and private funds over the next five years.

Noting that New Jersey-based pharmaceutical companies developed more than one-third of the new medicines the FDA-approved in 2002, McGreevey said the state is "the natural place for this entity to blossom."

"We have the unique combination of pharmaceutical infrastructure, biomedical research, university expertise and political will necessary to advance stem cell research," McGreevey said at a May 12 bill-signing.