The Orlando Sentinel reports that for about the past 20 years, “state medical boards responsible for disciplining doctors have failed to punish more than half of those whose hospitals revoked or restricted their privileges, according to a new report released Tuesday” by the group Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. “Altogether, the report says, 32 states let more than half of the offending doctors go without any reprimand.” In Florida alone, the report “found that 63 percent of the doctors whose hospital privileges were restricted or revoked were not disciplined by the state’s Board of Medicine.”
The Washington Post reports, “Among the most serious violations, which involved 2,071 of the 5,887 physicians who were not disciplined, were doctors who posed an immediate threat to health or safety, were incompetent or negligent, or provided substandard care, the study found.” Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and overseer of the study, “said he is urging US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to have the agency inspector general’s office reinstitute investigations of state medical boards.”
CQ HealthBeat reports that the consumer advocacy group is also “notifying the 33 medical boards that have the worst records in disciplining these doctors.
From the American Association for Justice news release.
