By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - Doctors and hospitals are keeping a careful eye on the state's only provider of medical malpractice insurance after the firm's quality rating was downgraded.

Most hospitals require their doctors to get insurance through a company with a rating higher than Columbus-based Ohio Hospital Insurance Co. now carries, said Tiffany Himmelreich, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Hospital Association.

Rating company A.M. Best downgraded OHIC to a "B plus plus" rating in February and then to a "B" rating last month out of concern over the financial strength of its New York parent company.

OHIC, with 18 percent of the medical malpractice policies in Ohio, provides insurance to about 6,000 physicians.

"We're very nervous about staying with OHIC," said Dr. Mark Rood, a family practitioner in Geauga County and member of a three-doctor practice.

Rood, 43, said he has to decide whether to stay with OHIC despite its uncertain future or switch to another company. But other companies aren't eager to write new policies, he said.

Cleveland Clinic hospitals plan to meet with OHIC officials within a week to hear the company's plans for regaining financial strength.

The downgrading has raised specters of another insurance crisis along the lines of the PIE bankruptcy in the 1990s, said Charles Miner, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic Health System's eastern region, which includes hospitals in East Cleveland, Euclid, Mayfield Heights and Warrensville Heights.

In 1998, a judge ordered the liquidation of PIE, which once was the largest medical malpractice insurer in Ohio.

"The track record on downgrades is not good," Miner said Thursday. At least 200 of his 1,500 medical employees carry OHIC insurance, he said.