By APARNA NARAYANAN
HEALTH WRITER
With New Jersey physicians' planned job action gaining steam, health-care workers yesterday sought to reassure the public that patients will be inconvenienced but not endangered.
On Tuesday night, a medical staff meeting attended by almost 200 doctors at Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick unanimously passed a motion supporting the work slowdown set for Feb. 3-5. On Wednesday night, a similar meeting at neighboring Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital also resulted in a unanimous vote to support the job action.
Patients anxious about next week's slowdown should contact their doctors right away to have their concerns addressed, doctors and activists suggested.
"The first thing people need to do is to check with doctors' offices, and if they are participating," said Dr. Robert Spierer, a family physician with a practice in Monroe.
Many family physicians, like himself, are choosing to keep their offices open, said Spierer, adding he sympathized with striking doctors.
"We're the point of access for a lot of acute and urgent care," he said, adding specialists, on the other hand, tend to see less acute cases in their offices and emergencies in hospitals.
"Patients should not panic," Spierer advised. Even doctors participating in the slowdown "will be available by phone," and urgent care will be treated the same way as "if it happened on a Sunday or holiday."
Patients should find out in advance "how they should go about contacting the physician" in an emergency, said Ralph Morano, a spokesman for New Jersey Citizens United for Healthcare Access, a group advocating limits on awards for pain-and-suffering damages.
Morano said there is no toll-free number that people can call for help or advice because of the "grass-roots nature" of the job action.
"No hot line would be able to give accurate localized information," he said.
Doctors protesting soaring malpractice insurance say premiums are doubling or tripling yearly as major companies have gone out of business or severely limited the number of policies they write. Doctors also blame higher insurance premiums on exorbitant jury awards for pain-and-suffering damages in malpractice lawsuits.
But several patient-advocacy groups, such as New Jersey Citizen Action, argue caps on jury awards will not solve the malpractice-insurance crisis.
"Citizen Action supports doctors' efforts to go out on a job action, but are concerned about their efforts to try to limit the legal rights of patients," said Bridget Devane, health-care coordinator of the group.
Evidence from other states shows caps do not decrease premiums, she said; instead, she urges monitoring the insurance industry.
While expressing "some concern" about the slowdown, Devane said she believed doctors and hospitals were working to keep patients informed about emergency-related measures.
Representatives from all area hospitals said contingency plans have been established to ensure patients' needs are met. Staffing in emergency rooms, in particular, has been boosted to prepare for the influx of patients who won't have access to family doctors, they said.
"Waiting times may be longer, people will be inconvenienced, but that's the point of this," said Dr. Jennifer Waxler, chairman of the Monmouth Medical Center emergency department. She added she hoped the job action would encourage the public to "call their legislators" to fix the liability-insurance crisis.
Aparna Narayanan:(732) 565-7306; e-mailanarayan@thnt.com
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