• 17
  • March
    2011

Doctors in multiple states with multiple medical malpractice reports have gone unpunished by state medical boards according to a recent report. The new report has found that over the last twenty years state medical boards have not disciplined over half of the doctors who lost their clinical privileges or had their clinical privileges restricted at the hospital they worked at. The study was conducted by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

The report reviewed data from the National Practitioner Data Bank from 1990 to 2009 and analyzed the number of doctors whose hospitals restricted or barred their practice. During the time frame 10,672 physicians in the United States received sanctions from the hospitals they practiced at, and of that number only 55 percent received any discipline from their respective state medical board.

The advocacy group's research director who is also a physician said that one of two alarming things is happening. The first is that state medical boards get information from hospitals but fail to act on the information or secondly state medical boards are not receiving information at all. She believes the first explanation is more likely. State medical boards have the authority to limit the practice of a medical doctor.

The number of doctors who were not disciplined by state medical boards but were disciplined by their hospitals for malpractice was 1,119. That is about one-fifth of the 5,887 doctors who were not disciplined by state medical boards. Two hundred and twenty doctors were identified as an even more dangerous threat to patients and were deemed "an immediate threat to health or safety."

Source: consumeraffairs.com, "Study finds little action taken against dangerous doctors," 3/15/11