Orlando Surgeons Halt Transplants Citing Soaring Malpractice Insurance Cost

A group of doctors who perform more than 100 kidney transplants a year at Florida Hospital in Orlando -- one of the busier kidney transplant centers in the country -- shut down their transplant practice as of July 1 because of the soaring cost of medical malpractice insurance.

"The transplant program went inactive as of midnight," said Tim Jankiewicz, executive director of TransLife, which both recovers all of the organs donated in Central Florida and transplants kidneys at Florida Hospital.

The doctors, members of Winter Park Urology Associates, said their old malpractice insurance company is leaving the state and getting new insurance would have more than doubled their cost to $560,000 from $224,000 -- or $70,000 for each of the practice's eight doctors.

Jankiewicz said the approximately 300 patients on the waiting list for kidney transplants at Florida Hospital "have been notified that the program is going into an inactive phase, which hopefully will not last any longer than 90 days."

Jankiewicz said TransLife was now planning to hire a transplant surgeon to take the lead in performing kidney transplants at Florida Hospital, and was "currently in the process of looking at two surgeons -- one in state and one out of state."

He said none of the patients listed at Florida Hospital had yet requested to be transferred to a waiting list at another transplant center. The only other kidney transplant program in the TransLife organ procurement area is the tiny program at the Bert Fish Medical Center in New Smyrna Beach.

While Bert Fish will now have access to kidneys retrieved during this period that might otherwise have gone to Florida Hospital, Jankiewicz said most of the recovered organs "would be placed according to the statewide sharing program."

That should benefit patients on the waiting lists at such large Florida transplant centers as the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, Tampa General Hospital, and Shands Hospital in Gainesville.

Florida Hospital Center performed 145 kidney transplants in 2001 and was in the top 10 percent of U.S. transplant centers in terms of number of these surgeries performed. It performed 115 kidney transplants last year.

Other Sources: TransLife