Doctors

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Rx for Bad Doctors?

 

Questionable physicians list draws fire

 

By Thomas D. Schram

HealthSCOUT Reporter

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 9 (HealthSCOUT) -- The consumer watchdog group Public

Citizen is out

with its latest listing of what it calls " questionable doctors, " but the

American Medical Association

and a medical ethicist have questions of their own about the propriety

of the list.

 

The new edition of " 20,125 Questionable Doctors " lists physicians who

have been disciplined by

state and national medical boards. Public Citizen calls it mandatory

reading when making what is

arguably the most important consumer decision: picking a doctor.

 

" The list is over 20,000 doctors who have had a final disciplinary

action taken against them by a

state or federal government, " says Dr. SidneyWolfe, director of Public

Citizen's Health Research

Group, which conducted the research.

 

Public Citizen says most of the doctors who were disciplined for the

five most serious offenses --

sexual abuse or sexual misconduct; substandard care, incompetence or

negligence; criminal

conviction; misprescribing or overprescribing of drugs; or substance

abuse -- were not kept from

practicing medicine even temporarily. Wolf says the list is critical

because consumers can find out

more about the car they are buying than the doctor they are planning to

visit.

 

But the AMA says that providing that information without a context is

unfair to the physician. And a

medical ethicist claims that making the list at all might be singling

out doctors improperly.

 

" The problem we have is the implication by the title that these are bad

doctors. Just because you're

disciplined doesn't mean you're a bad doctor or that you're practicing

bad medicine, " says Dr.

Thomas Reardon immediate past president of the AMA. " Just to list them

without any explanation is

tarring a large group of physicians with the same brush. "

 

And Christine Bennett of the University of Utah's Division of Medical

Ethics, questions the propriety

of presenting unrelated criminal conduct as a reason to brand a

physician as questionable.

 

" You can have these activities in your private life and still be a great

doctor or a great plumber or a

great journalist. So I think there's an ethical conflict. I don't want

to set doctors apart from everyone

else. I think we don't know those things about the people who teach our

children. So I think there's

an ethical conflict there. "

 

But Public Citizen's Wolfe says there is a big difference.

 

" I don't think there is any such thing as a state-wide disciplining of

teachers. I think one obvious

difference is that there are a far greater number of people who are

killed by negligence by doctors

than by plumbers or teachers. Doctors are licensed by the state and

occasionally -- not as often as

they should -- they discipline them, " says Wolfe.

 

The AMA's Reardon says that the licensing process is just the point:

Doctors deserve due process

like everyone else.

 

" State licensing boards are there to protect the public, and they do

that by going through a

disciplinary process. Based on the facts, they decide that disciplinary

action should be taken. "

 

Reardon say the AMA supports patients having access to " good, reliable,

valid information. " But he

says that the questionable doctors listing falls short of that. Reardon

says the state medical boards

are only as powerful as laws allow them to be and that they are often

underfunded.

 

He says that he would like to see Wolfe work on those problems.

 

" I think his efforts would be better if he directed them at making the

system work better. He's not

happy with the system. "

 

What To Do

 

For more information on " 20,125 Questionable Doctors " or to buy the

book, visit Questionable

Doctors.