Wednesday, September 09, 2009
2 OB-GYN doctors lack hospital access
A Salem practice touts its care for pregnant women, but has no permission at Lewis-Gale.
The latest from The Ticker blog
Two Salem doctors who advertise themselves as specializing in care for pregnant women do not have the needed permission to deliver babies steps away from their office at Lewis-Gale Medical Center.
Dr. Chandler Mohan and Dr. Emad Atta run the Women's Center of Blue Ridge in Salem. The two are licensed to practice medicine in Virginia and identify their specialty as obstetrics and gynecology. They are not board certified in the specialty.
Neither, however, can admit patients to Lewis-Gale Medical Center. That means they can treat patients only outside of a hospital setting.
No other doctors are listed as having ownership in the practice, according to records with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The practice is incorporated under the name Emorey Medical Corp.
Both doctors used to have privileges to admit and treat patients at Lewis-Gale, said Nancy May, spokeswoman for the hospital.
"But currently they do not have privileges," she said. "I'm not at liberty to say when they did have [privileges] or when that status changed."
May also declined to answer questions about why the status changed.
Neither Atta nor Mohan returned calls to their office seeking comment.
Neither physician has ever had privileges at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, said Carilion spokesman Eric Earnhart.
The doctors lease space at Lewis-Gale's medical east building for their outpatient practice, May said.
Doctors are not required to have privileges at a hospital in order to practice medicine, said Dr. William Harp, executive director of the Virginia Board of Medicine.
Both doctors have clean records with the state with no disciplinary action.
Complaints against any doctor are confidential until they are disclosed through a public notice by the board. The number or type of complaints investigated against any doctor are not public record, Harp said.
The situation means patients of Atta and Mohan must be treated by a different physician if they are admitted to the hospital for any reason. That includes pregnant patients who plan to deliver in a hospital.
"One of the things we like in medicine is continuity of care," said Dr. James Ferguson, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "And that is where, to the degree possible, the physician or same group of people or physicians care for a patient throughout."
Ferguson, who is not familiar with the specific situation involving Mohan or Atta, said ideally most doctors specializing in obstetrical care see patients during the entire pregnancy and are involved with the delivery of the child. He said it is unusual in urban areas where there is a nearby hospital for an OB physician not to have an affiliation with a hospital.
When there is a situation where the same doctor or practice treated a woman during prenatal care, but could not provide the care needed during labor and delivery, Ferguson said there is usually a way to coordinate care among the various doctors involved.
"If that situation occurs it is critical that there is some sort of collaborative working relationship between those physicians and there is an efficient way of communicating a patient's condition," he said.
It is unknown if that is the case with Mohan and Atta.
Both Carilion and Lewis-Gale do have women show up in the emergency department who are in labor and do not have a doctor. Both hospitals have OB specialists available 24 hours a day to treat such patients.
"They are going to be provided the same appropriate care as any of our patients," May said.
Currently, four OB specialists deliver babies at Lewis-Gale, May said.
Earnhart said Roanoke Memorial has seen a continual increase in the number of women who don't have a doctor and that the hospital has been making a concerted effort to improve services to those patients.
Besides obstetrics, the Web site for the Women's Center of Blue Ridge lists several other services, including laser treatments, weight loss, primary care for women, cosmetic gynecology and urogynecology.
