Swann visits Fayette
Despite a late start for a tour of the Uniontown Hospital Friday morning, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann said he had no trouble realizing the difficulties facing the facility, Fayette County residents and other hospitals and communities across the state. The nationally recognized former professional football star, who will challenge incumbent Democrat Edward G. Rendell in November, said he is hopeful that with help from voters he can make significant changes to help the medical community.
“This is a serious problem here in the commonwealth,” Swann told reporters following the tour of the facility. “You hear it first hand from the doctors about the struggle trying to retain physicians. We need to try and provide the health care the people need…we need to pass tort reform legislation to keep frivolous lawsuits from driving up the costs. We are one in only a handful of states that have not.”
According to Swann, runaway lawsuits are primarily responsible for rising health insurance costs and increased costs for physicians’ malpractice insurance, something that hospital officials said affects Fayette County greatly.
“This area faces significant economic challenges,” hospital President Paul Bacharach told Swann as they viewed one of the hospitals labs. Bacharach said doctors are too often forced to decide to either leave the state to avoid financial troubles or stay for the community.
“It is very difficult for us to replace physicians,” he said.
Emergency Room Director and Chairman Dr. Jeffrey Frye told Swann that with the rising cost of malpractice insurance and the large amount of area residents without health insurance, the region is a “difficult sell” for recruiting new doctors.
“To properly handle the volume of people we have now, we probably need an emergency department twice the size we have,” Frye said. “There has been a 46-percent increase in emergency room traffic since I began here in 1997.
Frye told Swann that the rise in emergency visits is a direct correlation to the 4,500 physicians who have departed the state over the last four years, many due to runaway litigation.
“What we see here are patients that do not have any health insurance,” Frye said. “They are the working poor,” he added, noting that they often fall just short of government aide for medical needs.
And Frye said the lack of coverage also results in problems at the ER worse than they should be.
“They wait longer and don’t seek medical care when they should,” Frye said.
Swann mingled easily among the patients and doctors at the hospital, joking with one man in the catheter lab and then telling a doctor in the hall that the man was in good spirits and ready to go.
Later, as he talked with reporters outside the hospital, Swann took time to autograph the shirts of several people waiting to meet the ex-Steeler wide receiver turned politico.
“We need to do more in Pennsylvania,” Swann said. “We need to get services and provide services and the governor should have signed the “Fair Share Act.” It is a slap in the face to the medical community.”
The “Fair Share Act” would apply to civil cases where two or more defendants are found liable. The act would limit the liability of each defendant to the proportional damage equal to the total liability. Lawmakers who support the act hope the restrictions on damages would drive down soaring damage awards in civil cases.
Swann said if elected, he would push for tort reform as a “first step” to helping alleviate the financial burden on hospitals across the state and chastised Rendell for promising to sign reform and failing to do so.
“He said he would do it, and you have to live up to the promises you make,” Swann said.