DC Scare Tactics

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A new survey by Public Citizen has put the lie to the scare tactics employed by the Medical Society of the District of Columbia which grossly understated the number of obstetricians practicing in the District. The Public Citizen survey sought to identify and determine the status of all DC obstetricians and found that obstetric services are readily available and there are dozens more obstetricians delivering babies in the District of Columbia than the Medical Society claimed.

The Medical Society had claimed that it had surveyed 141 of 151 obstetricians listed in the 2005 Washington Physicians Directory and had found that 61 had stopped delivering babies. The previous year, the Medical Society had claimed that nearly 9 out of 10 obstetricians in the District had moved, planned to move or were considering moving out of the District. The Public Citizen survey identified all obstetricians delivering babies in D.C. hospitals by examining medical directories, website listings and phone books. Their positive results showed that of 180 OBGYNs, 113 are currently practicing obstetrics, 41% more than the 80 figure claimed by the Medical Society. 96% of these 113 obstetricians (a total of 108) are currently taking new patients. These numbers do not include the 92 OBGYN residents currently seeing patients and delivering babies at the District's four teaching hospitals. This is another example of big medicine's efforts to scare the public into enacting unnecessary tort reform by using statistics that are simply untrue.