Personal Injury Protection

Issue: A proposal by the Department of Banking and Insurance (DOBI) is jeopardizing your access to quality medical care in the event of an automobile accident. Under the automobile insurance laws of New Jersey, all policies contain personal injury protection coverage to pay for medical expenses that result from an automobile accident. DOBI is now proposing to drastically reduce payments to physicians and others. This will result in fewer physicians and emergency rooms willing to see automobile accident victims. Your care will suffer, and only insurance companies will benefit.

MSNJ Position: MSNJ believes that the adoption of this fee schedule will have a dramatic impact on the care provided to automobile accident victims. Our existing trauma system is one of the finest in the nation, supported by physicians who are on-call and emergency rooms ambulatory surgery centers that are able to handle their care. While Trauma I and II facilities are exempt from the regulations for surgery performed there, all other emergency care reimbursements will be dramatically reduced as well as reimbursement for all follow-up care performed outside the trauma center.

As a result of these cuts, fewer physicians will be willing to be on-call 24-hours a day or will demand higher payments from hospitals for doing so. This can have a detrimental affect on many hospital emergency rooms, including trauma centers. Many emergency rooms may be forced to close their doors to automobile accident victims, deferring them to other facilities, thus delaying care and inconveniencing patients

Status: These regulations were proposed on September 5, 2006. A 60-day comment period was orignially provided, although at our request we have received a 30-day extension meaning all comments were due by December 4, 2006. We anticipate that there may be legislative hearings on the proposal.

MSNJ Positions on Key Public Policy Issues

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