State medical board ranking falls
Fewer doctors were disciplined in California in 2007 than the previous year, causing the state to fall in a nationwide ranking a consumer group released Tuesday.
California ranked 36th in the nation in disciplinary actions against doctors, which include the revocation, surrender and suspension of medical licenses, according to a report released by Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer advocacy group. The previous year, Public Citizen ranked California 27th in the nation.
The data show that physicians who might have been properly disciplined a few years ago may escape scrutiny today, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the author of the report.
“In California, they’re less likely to get disciplined. They are sinking the rate of disciplinary actions,” Wolfe said.
Candis Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, said the ranking’s premise -- that the number of disciplinary actions equates to a better job of protecting the public -- was unreliable.
“We would challenge him to measure more meaningful actions, including state medical boards’ educational efforts directed to physicians and consumers,” Cohen said. “We are confident California would fare well in such a ranking.”
The consumer group ranks states’ medical boards by calculating the number of disciplinary actions over the number of doctors licensed in that state.
In California, an average of 2.74 serious actions per 1,000 physicians were taken each year from 2005 to 2007. California had a yearly average of 3.27 serious actions per 1,000 physicians from 2004 to 2006.
Overall, disciplinary action against doctors nationwide fell 6% from 2006 to 2007, according to the report, the third consecutive year the number has fallen.
The states with the highest rates were Alaska, Kentucky, Ohio, Arizona and Nebraska; the lowest were South Dakota, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Minnesota and South Carolina.
Wolfe said additional funding, staffing, proactive investigations and excellent leadership at the medical boards are key to better disciplining of doctors.
“In every state, most of the doctors are practicing very good medicine, and it is only a small fraction that needs to be disciplined,” Wolfe said.
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