Med Mal News

In a letter sent to California Governor Jerry Brown on Aug. 9, the Washington, DC-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen blasted the disciplinary record of the Medical Board of California. The group asserts that while 1,312 doctors were disciplined by their hospitals, HMOs and other health care organizations over the last 19 years, only 604 also had disciplinary actions taken against them by the Medical Board. This means that more than half of the California doctors disciplined by health care organizations over this period of time (710) were not also disciplined by the Medical Board of California, a circumstance that troubles Public Citizen. According to the letter, signed by Sidney Wolfe, M.D., Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, the lack of state medical board disciplinary action is troubling because “[o]f an estimated 900,000 or more physicians who have practiced in the U.S. from 1990 to 2009, only 10,672 ' barely more than one percent ' have ever had a clinical privilege disciplinary action reported to the NPDB, a repository of all state disciplinary actions and medical malpractice payouts as well as clinical privilege actions against physicians. Thus, when hospitals or other organizations finally do take such actions against a physician, the basis for the action and the type of action are usually quite serious.”

Public Citizen asserts that the Medical Board's minimal follow-up to organizational disciplinary actions poses a danger to California patients, and its letter asks Governor Brown to “order an independent investigation of these serious problems.”