In addition, high fees charged by specialists and paid by hospitals for on-call coverage are not justified based on the premise that on-call coverage increases a physician's liability exposure, he said. “Being on call doesn't give you more litigation than being in general surgery—that's well documented,” he said.
Dr. Taylor disagreed. “The literature is very clear that emergency care is one of the highest liability environments in health care,” he said. “You only have to look at what's happened to emergency physician malpractice premiums relative to others not involved in emergency care. Mine almost doubled the last 3 years I worked.”
Dr. Britt pointed out that no other country “is spending what we're spending on health care, and yet we're not getting what we should.” But he doubted more spending could solve the problem. “We have an obligation to provide care for the injured and the ill—and if the specialists, rightly or wrongly, say they can't provide that, then we need to come up with a different idea.”