Kevin MD pointed out this medmal story, and it deserves some scrutiny. The Fayetteville Observer ran as story available now online entitled, “Neurosurgeon shortage critical.”

As of Monday, Fayetteville will only have a neurosurgeon on emergency call three days a week. The rest of the time, patients who may need emergency brain surgery will be sent to UNC Hospitals at Chapel Hill.

Cape Fear Valley Health System previously had neurosurgeons on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week through an exclusive agreement with Carolina Neurosurgical Services, a group of four brain surgeons — the only ones in town.

Earlier this month, however, one of the group’s surgeons, Dr. Rene Kotzen, voluntarily gave up privileges at the hospital to lower his high malpractice insurance costs, said one of the group’s leaders, Dr. Carol Wadon.

As a result, the group told the health system it could no longer provide around-the-clock coverage of the emergency room.

A lot could be said about this amazing story, but I want to single out one quotation from Dick Taylor, CEO of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers:

“We recognize that there really are issues with malpractice insurance rates, and that it is unregulated,” Taylor said. “But we also need to make medicine safer. To take away the incentive to make it safer is the wrong way to go.”

But what does this incentive produce? Reasonable medical decisions? I’m not going to google “defensive medicine” right now. Do that at your leisure (and be sure to scan the Google blog search engine as well). Ask yourself, Is this response to the fear of medical malpractice lawsuits really making medicine safer?