MSDC Testifies at Hearing on Proposed National Capital Medical Center

Patient Access Would Improve, But Potential Adverse Effects Remain Unclear

Washington, DC--Today, at a public hearing on a proposal to build a National Capital Medical Center (NCMC) where DC General once stood, the Medical Society expressed cautious optimism on the potential for enhanced patient access to “both basic and cutting-edge” care—especially in underserved parts of the District—but concern about the potential for adverse impact on the City’s existing hospitals and healthcare infrastructure

At the hearing—conducted by the DC Council Committee on Health—MSDC President Victor G. Freeman, MD, MPP, reminded the Council that MSDC “did stand with the Council in support of extensive reforms to preserve DC General Hospital,” noting that “if there was no hospital on the DC General Campus, then we’d be talking about building one.”

Dr. Freeman outlined “three major access issues” facing the City: geographic access to care; socio-economic access to specialty care issue; and a surge capacity/ disaster preparedness issue.

“I remind you, however, that the issue of access to a specialist is not just a geographic one,” Dr. Freeman noted.  “With extraordinarily large DC jury awards driving up medical liability premiums, we now face three crises.”

• Current specialists are finding themselves unable to afford their liability premiums if they serve large numbers of Alliance and Medicaid patients, due to the poor reimbursements provided by these programs.

• Hospitals and even the clinics, that serve the poor are having to rethink what programs they can afford to offer indigent patients given the growing percentage of their budget that they need to devote to ever-increasing high liability premiums for care providers for the underserved. 

• We, as a city, face great difficulty in recruiting physicians to practice in underserved areas because medical liability insurance premiums for a doctor who chooses to practice in DC can be anywhere from $4,000 to $40,000 greater than if that doctor chooses to practice across the state line in Maryland or Virginia.  All hospitals in the District face a similar situation, so clearly the financial viability of the National Capital Medical Center and its ability to serve the city's most vulnerable populations are inextricably linked to medical liability reform in the District of Columbia.

The Medical Society’s testimony concluded with three concerns:

• It is unclear what adverse effects the NCMC will have on emergency department use, admissions, or specialty care across the city;

• There is a very real danger that the NCMC may destabilize an already fragile hospital market;

• MSDC is concerned about the impact of the NCMC on the viability of the vulnerable hospitals that serve the eastern half of the city.

Click here, to read the Medical Society’s complete testimony