Medical Boards Fail to Protect Patients from Negligent Doctors
A recent comprehensive report published by a leading independent consumer advocacy group reveals that most states are not living up to their obligations to protect patients from doctors who fail to practice medicine in conformance with accepted industry standards. Public Citizen, a national non-profit public interest organization, collected data from the Federation of State Medical Boards on the number of disciplinary actions taken against doctors in 2002-2004. In an April 2005 report, Public Citizen concluded that the following states have the least effective disciplinary procedures: Hawaii, Delaware, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, Rhode Island, Arkansas, South Carolina, Washington, Tennessee, Mississippi, Michigan, Connecticut, and Florida.
According to the report, the data obtained raises "serious questions about the extent to which patients in many of these states with poorer records of serious doctor discipline are being protected from physicians who might well be barred from practice in states with boards that are doing a better job of disciplining physicians. It is quite possible that patients are being injured or killed more often in states with poor doctor disciplinary records than in states with consistently high performance."
We strongly believe that legislatures should not be stripping patients of their civil rights by, among other things, imposing caps on recoveries in lawsuits brought by victims of medical negligence. Instead, states need to fund and monitor medical boards so that negligent doctors are appropriately disciplined. In doing so, medical errors, and thus lawsuits, will be reduced.
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