Dangerous doctors skirt scrutiny, despite database
While practicing medicine in Illinois, Jay Riseman was called an “imminent danger to the public” by a state medical board attorney and was placed on indefinite probation in 2002. The doctor also racked up a dozen malpractice suits, including one involving the death of a 2-month-old infant a day after he prescribed a heavy dose of a laxative, twice the allowance for adults.
But Riseman now practices in Missouri, where a prospective patient checking his credentials with the state medical board would find a clean record. He’s also licensed in Kansas, where he satisfied the board’s concerns by promising not to perform surgeries.
It would be bad enough if Riseman were a singular figure who slipped through cracks in the medical discipline system. But the system is a patchwork. Hundreds of doctors who’ve been publicly disciplined, chastised or barred from practicing by one state now practice in another, according to an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (part of the USA TODAY Network) and MedPage Today.
Astoundingly, in this digital age when a bad review can mar a hotel’s reputation nationwide and an unpaid bill can ruin a consumer’s credit rating, some doctors are able to hide their troubled pasts from unsuspecting patients — and even from state regulators — just by relocating.
Three decades ago, Congress passed a law designed to change all that. “Incompetent practitioners will no longer be able to escape detection by moving from state to state,” Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan said when the National Practitioner Data Bank came online in 1990.
It hasn’t quite worked that way. Congress, bowing to pressure from the medical establishment, made sure the data were confidential so the public has no access.
The database now contains 1.3 million reports, making it the nation’s most comprehensive resource for negative information on doctors. Yet many state medical boards fail to use it, an irresponsible decision that puts their residents at risk.
Just a handful of states — including Florida and Wyoming — have signed up for a data bank service that continually checks all of their physicians for new infractions or other signs of trouble. The service costs $2 per doctor checked, a pittance to ensure knowledge about someone who might harm patients.
Last year, 13 boards never checked the data bank at all, and six checked less than a half-dozen doctors.
States also differ on what information they report to the public. Only five states — Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts and North Carolina — report at least six of the seven categories of discipline available. So most state records are woefully incomplete.
A medical board’s most important job is to ensure that the public is aware of any infractions, and that truly dangerous doctors are not able to practice. Too many are falling down on their job and putting patients in harm’s way.