Medical Review Boards and For Doctor Eyes Only

Sometimes it might seem like I'm anti-doctor, but of course that's not the case. I am anti-exploitation...whether it's of power, influence or of the "rules." In the health services crisis, for many years, doctors have protected their own interests at the expense of consumers when it comes to conduct that influences our care, the price of that care, our privacy, and our outcomes.

In choosing doctors, the same doctors who complain about the cost of their malpractice insurance, secretively protect information about complaints against themselves and their peers. Consumers should have access to doctor records of complaints against the same. Instead of better doctors riding on their own record of good performance, we have doctors complaining about malpractice rates as a group. This group conduct is great for protecting the financial well-being of physicians as we recently saw in the new law protecting their pay under Medicare, but is not going to work forever with consumers.

Some states have gotten the message. Florida has a website where consumers are given the names of medical personnel disciplined by the medical board and what outcome was provided. You can click on a name and find out what happened and what action the Medical Board took. Many states, including my own are not so forthcoming.

Consumers are learning to deal with no privacy, from posting their pictures for drunk driving to giving every detail of their health history to get a checkup, and it is long past time for doctors to do the same. The framed diploma from Medical school is not what consumers need, they need to know any issue whether financial (unethical deals with drug companies) or medical (any malpractice claim) in order to manage their health effectively.

First, Medical Boards must supply consumers with full information if consumers are expected to manage their own health because the quality of medical services impacts outcome. Until this information is available for every State in a public manner, and free of charge, consumers are left unable to give informed consent to treatment by a physician.

Second, another important aspect of such publication of information by Medical Boards is that these Boards, often give the benefit of the doubt to doctors so when some minor action is actually taken, you can bank on it having been pretty egregious. The soft-shoe outcome of probation, new demands for protocol being placed on the physician, or some other non-career ending action makes it imperative that consumers be alerted to physician history.

The third and final point is that doctors can be licensed in several states and that suspension in one doesn't mean the doctor won't move to another. Their records should follow them for the protection of the public and should be available to the public easily and without charge as part of our public policy.

I wrote to my state representatives and asked about the failure of my state to provide such information, it will be interesting to see what the response is. Each citizen should be pressuring their representatives for free access to such information from medical boards in their states. FL, which has come under a lot of criticism, should be proud of its efforts in this area.