Centre Community Hospital announced last night that its emergency department will remain open through the Feb. 28 deadline after Centre Emergency Medical Associates (CEMA) obtained malpractice insurance coverage.

The emergency department at the hospital was threatening to close because the Pennsylvania Professional Liability Joint Underwriting Association (JUA), which provides CEMA with insurance, did not provide an insurance quote for the doctors at the hospital.

CEMA will be covered for an additional six months, said Thomas Murray, hospital president. It is illegal for physicians in Pennsylvania to practice medicine without malpractice insurance, Murray said.

Murray said he did not know the price of the insurance premium for CEMA.

JUA is an insurer of last resort for medical liability, which means there are no other insurance companies in the state willing to provide the physicians of CEMA with medical malpractice insurance. "There are two other insurance companies -- neither is accepting new clients," Murray said.

In addition, all of the 160 physicians employed at the hospital have to find their own insurance providers, he said.

The hospital would have had to use its contingency plan if the doctors lost their insurance coverage, Murray said. This contingency consisted of having to work more closely with the hospital's other employees, such as the nursing staff and physician's assistants, in order to staff the emergency department, he said.

"There are a tremendous number of physicians across the state of Pennsylvania in the same boat," Murray said. "This is a statewide problem."

Physicians are trying to deal with the problem as best they can, he added.

The crisis facing physicians might require the state government to intervene, he said.

"I think there needs to be a conversation on this problem held in Harrisburg," Murray said. "What's wrong with talking about what needs to be done?"

Other states have changed their constitutions to incorporate caps on non-economic damages awarded to victims of malpractice claims.

"Caps are the only thing left to do," Murray said.

Spokesman for U.S. Rep. John Peterson's, R-Centre, Paul Feenstra, said in an interview earlier this month that Peterson proposed legislation setting caps on non-economic damages awarded to victims of medical malpractice at $250,000.

The act places the cap to be either two times the economic damages incurred by the plaintiff or $250,000, whichever is more, Feenstra said.