Nearly 1,000 newly minted doctors who worked at Hahnemann University Hospital spent the holidays trying to keep their medical licenses from being tarnished or lost in the collapse of the historic Philadelphia medical teaching institution, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Less than two years after being acquired by private investors, Hahnemann is defunct and says that it can’t provide insurance to protect the doctors from malpractice lawsuits arising out of their work at the downtown Philadelphia hospital. After 150 years of service to the poor and indigent, to victims of gunshots and traffic accidents, Hahnemann filed for bankruptcy in June and shut down in the fall amid waves of street protests in which nurses and doctors stood shoulder to shoulder with community advocates. Residents whose career plans were shaken up by the bankruptcy have settled into new training slots, but aftershocks continue. The malpractice insurance Hahnemann provided runs out within weeks. After that, former Hahnemann residents who practice medicine without insurance are exposed to consequences ranging from red flags on their professional records to losing their licenses, under the laws of Pennsylvania and more than a dozen other states. The doctors are scrambling to scrape up thousands of dollars to buy insurance to cover their work at Hahnemann.
