A report by the group Public Citizen shed some light on state medical licensing boards across the country. The report examined the extent to which these boards are taking disciplinary actions against their licensed physicians who injure patients. The report ranked the fifty states (and the District of Columbia) by their “serious disciplinary actions.”
The authors of the report relied on data from the National Practitioner Data Bank to compare how each state has taken action against physicians. Keep in mind that the National Practitioner Data Bank is not a public resource; access is limited to hospitals, health care entities, state and federal licensing authorities, malpractice insurers, and entities administering state and federal health care programs. You may remember that state licensing boards, hospitals, and health entities are required to report adverse licensing and disciplinary actions against individual providers.
The authors of the report defined “serious disciplinary actions” as “those that had a clear impact on a physician’s ability to practice.” These included, for example, license revocations, suspensions, summary restrictions, and a half dozen other categories. The authors then compared the number of serious disciplinary actions to the number of practicing physicians in that state.
Significantly, the authors noted that the rate of serious actions per 1000 physicians was likely not a reflection that the quality of care varies per state, but instead that the medical licensing boards apply discipline differently.
The state with the most active medical licensing board, and by a long shot, is Kentucky, with 2.29 serious actions per 1,000 physicians. Washington rolled in at 29th, with .93 serious actions per 1,000 physicians.
To put that in perspective, patients in Kentucky and Washington experience about the same rate of adverse events from medical errors. The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, however, is disciplining these physicians at a rate nearly two and a half times as that of the Washington Medical Quality Assurance Commission. Does that make you comfortable as a health care consumer in Washington?
