Mar 17 2011
The consumer group Public Citizen released a report finding that state boards have failed to discipline more than half of the nation's doctors who have been sanctioned by the hospitals where they had privileges.
The Washington Post: Report: State Boards Don't Punish All Doctors Sanctioned By Hospitals
State medical boards have failed to discipline 55 percent of the nation's doctors who were sanctioned by the hospitals where they worked, according to a report released Tuesday by Public Citizen (Sun, 3/16).
CQ Healthbeat: Consumer Group Questions Why States Don't Discipline Doctors Who Have Their Privileges Curtailed
Just because a hospital revokes or restricts a doctor's practice privileges doesn't mean that physician will be disciplined by his or her state medical board. In fact, according to a report by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizens, 55 percent of doctors in that position never had any action taken against them. Public Citizen analyzed data from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). The review showed that of 10,672 physicians listed in the database as having had their clinical privileges revoked or restricted by hospitals, 45 percent of them also had one or more licensing actions taken against them by state medical boards. The group examined the NPDB's Public Use File from its inception in 1990 to 2009 (3/15).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
|