Many 'bad' doctors evade censure

09/04/97
USA Today

The number of doctors disciplined for sexual misconduct doubled from 1990 to 1994, and only one-third of doctors disciplined by federal authorities for drug or Medicare violations faced medical practice restrictions, a report finds.

Public Citizen Health Research Group's 13,012 Questionable Doctors lists doctors who faced disciplinary action as of December 1995. The number is up from 10,289 listed in the organization's previous compilation, but too many bad doctors continue practicing, says Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the group's director.

"If airline pilots were as poorly regulated as physicians, we would have . . . one plane crashing s every day killing 200 people," says Wolfe.

Among Wolfe's conclusions:

  • 5.1% of disciplinary actions were for sexual abuse of patients or other sexual misconduct, up from 2.5% in 1990.
  • 67% of doctors disciplined for substandard, incompetent or negligent care were allowed to continue practicing with little or no restriction. 31% of doctors whose narcotics licenses were restricted by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration faced no state discipline.
  • 30% of doctors barred from the federal Medicare program were not disciplined by state medical boards.


"The medical boards are doing a great job with the resources and the limitations that they have," says Dale Austin of the Federation of State Medical Boards.

Austin and Wolfe agree that boards are handicapped by staffing and funding problems. Wolfe also blames interference from state medical associations for the lack of disciplinary actions in many cases.

Wolfe says the states with consistently effective medical boards are Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma and West Virginia. The worst, in his opinion, are Delaware, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

Read the full study