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Subscribe to RSSA database of disciplinary action against doctors and other medical professionals that was closed in September has been restored, but with new restrictions intended to prevent reporters from using it to “out” individual doctors with troubled track records.
As detailed almost two months ago in Open Channel, the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, eliminated access to the National Practitioner Data Bank after discovering that reporters had managed to link the data, which masks identifying information, to local malpractice cases and disciplinary cases.
The New York Times reported Thursday that it was taken down “in response to a doctor’s complaint,” and ProPublica published this account.
In any case, HRSA on Wednesday restored the database, but with a new requirement that anyone who uses it agrees not to cross-check it against other public information, such as court files, to put names to the numbers.
Related story: Secretive lawsuit could limit access to safety warnings
In a statement accompanying the restoration, HRSA Administrator Mary K. Wakefield said that the database remains an important tool “to protect patients from incompetent, unprofessional, and often dangerous health care practitioners.” But noting that federal law restricts the confidential information identifying individual doctors, she said that if the agency discovers a journalist or other individual has used the public version in combination with other sources to identify a problem doctor, “HRSA will ask for the data to be returned.”
Her statement provided no details on how such a demand would work, but it presumably it would occur only after publication of a story linking the data to an individual doctor.
The Times quoted Charles Ornstein, president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and a reporter with the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica, as saying that's one reason the rule appears to lack teeth.
“It’s troubling that a federal agency is telling reporters what they can or can’t do,” he told the newspaper. “And how are they going to enforce this?”
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Under the 1971 Freedom of Informations Act, any reporter, or other individual can cross check any data that is open for public access.
If it's on the net, it's free information, because it's part and parcel of open documented website.
You can go talk to your lawyers, if their to YOUNG to remember the Act.
why are bad doctors being protected?
The information provided by National Practitioner Data Bank is not there so the public can go on a witch hunt. The data is provided so that care may ultimately be improved, not for shaming purposes or so local news investigative reporters can get ratings. I'm sure you've been around the Vine long enough to see how information out of context is mishandled and misunderstood.
But maybe you are on to something. Perhaps we should have a Data Bank on every profession...open for public scrutiny.
Amen.The state of Missouri sends out a newsletter to all the licensed nurses in the state, giving the names,addresses, and license numbers of any nurse who they have seen fit to discipline.They even include names of nurses who have a chemical addiction (that a lot of them wouldn't have if they were in a different profession) and who need treatment.
Additionally, if a malicious complaint is made against a nurse by someone at a hospital or same day surgery center-and this happens to whistleblowers and nurses who report physicians for sexual harassment far more often than it should,and when the malicious complaint is investigated by the state board it is found to be completely unfounded, the Missouri Board of Nursing continues to report that the complaint was made to any hospital or same day surgery center who is thinking of hiring that nurse, for the rest of the nurse's life.
So why the outrageous double standard?
Sounds like a reason to NOT work in Missouri as a nurse. That is ridiculous. What purpose could it serve other than to get other nurses to gossip? That's really sad. It's not a double standard, it's just a really bad rule of the Missouri Nursing Board.
We are going to fire teachers here in Wisconsin for poor performance but we are not even ALLOWED to check the performance of DOCTORS?
INSANE!
Yeah Always Protect The Doctors And The AMA.
No surprise, there have been problems from the beginning. There are no penalties for erroneously or intentionally misreporting. There is a very slow move toward discipline. The whole thing is a joke!
Reported practitioners can have erroneous reports corrected or even deleted from the Data Bank. Reporting entities are also subject to law suits for not providing due process or intentionally misreporting to the Data Bank.
Entities which are eligible to receive the data do not consider it a joke. In user surveys they rate the Data Bank as extremely useful and valuable to them. It is so valuable, in fact, that 2/3 of all the queries to the Data Bank are made voluntarily; only hospitals are required by law to query. Entities would not voluntarily query and pay the fee to do so, if they thought the Data Bank is a joke.
By the way, did you know that only about 2 percent of all physicians are responsible for over half of all the money paid out for malpractice over the last 20 years? It is a fact. Why does the medical profession and the AMA want to protect these few who cause the bulk of the malpractice problem?
Sorry- have a friend that just went through this. The declaration DOES NOT come off- it is merely noted as erroneous. And the reporting entity loses their ability to report for some number of years. Drunks, drug abusers and pedophiles go undisciplined, but let someone order "too much pain medication" for a patient....
Less than 10 percent of all the suits filed ever settle against the physician- so the 2% makes sense. Just seems that both docs and patients could expect more.
After graduating high school, it takes between 11 and 16 years to become a fully licensed physician including at least 5 rigorous standardized exams and a host of stringent licensing requirements.
It takes a person about 48 hours to find a lawyer and file a lawsuit.
Until malpractice and disciplinary hearings have been adjudicated, maybe we should protect a physician's reputation just a little. If you are worried about your doc, take a look at your state's medical licensing board website.
Weird how back in the 1970s we all knew that medical costs were through the roof due to malpractice suits, most of which were frivolous. So now in the 2010s we have it all - staggering medical costs AND poor practitioners.
Thank you for offering some much needed perspective on this very important issue. I could not agree with you more and could not have said it better!
Sadmorons, the problem is that a bad physician can permanently destroy your life, whether it be through death or disability. While I know that medicine is not an exact science and that doctors are human and will make mistakes, if there's a "physician" out there who habitually mistreats his/her patients, as a potential patient, I damn sure want to know about that, and I have the right to! I'm putting my life and well-being in this person's hands! There's nothing more valuable than that!
I have multiple chronic illnesses and have seen countless doctors, and am seeing a new one tomorrow. I was talking to a friend earlier this week about how I was considering canceling because I'm just so worn down with trying to find a decent doctor (I'm very young to have the conditions I do and am often not taken seriously as a result), and she told me to view it as a business transaction. I am the consumer, and I am purchasing his services. I have a right to ask questions and know about what I'm buying. I never saw it in that light, but it's making me feel much more comfortable.
The only downside I can see to this database is that people tend to leave messages more when they're unhappy with the services than when they're satisfied, so it could unfairly cast the physician in a bad light. It's one of the reasons that I always make sure to acknowledge exceptionally good service/products as well as exceptionally poor ones.
Protect a physicians reputation, why, because THEY chose to spend all that time in school? They chose to spend all that time in school and they make an enormous salary and people have the right to see the mistakes they've made, because those very mistakes could cause the end of someone's life, or a lifelong disability. They make the choice to go to school that long, they accept the enormous paycheck and they also must shoulder the responsibility for the mistakes they make. People have a right to know.
I figure, half the doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class and I've come across several in that "bottom category." I should be able to find out if a doctor has made numerous mistakes and which doctors to avoid. Withholding that information from the public is criminal.
I think the problem they are trying to address is innocent until proven guilty. A complaint or malpractice suit does not automatically mean it's a valid complaint. We as a society say we believe in our laws but often judge people as guilty just because they are charged.
On a personal note I am glad there is a database but I know that every doctor gets some complaints and many are sued just because the patient didn't like the outcome.
If the identity of the bad doctors is hidden, how are would be patients protected?
I sat on a jury for a malpractice case. After a week in court, it took us, the jury, all of five minutes to decide our verdict. The malpractice case had absolutely no merit at all.
Having a malpractice case against a doctor doesn't necessarily mean anything. A pattern of convictions means everything.
Well said. Excellent point.
The rights to the information about shoddy medical treatment far outweigh the rights of the individual who was mistreating patients. Isn't that completely obvious?
Doctors and hospitals killed over 197,000 people in 1 year due to mistakes. If someone is driving and makes a mistake that kills someone they get prosecuted for manslaughter. What happened to Dr's. and hospitals?
I got injured on the job and the company sent me to a "Specialist" who worked for the insurance company. That man declared me well after two weeks of physical therapy. That SOB ruined my life and career for money. It took years YEARS before I regained a fraction of what I had before the accident. Devils like that should be on a data base somewhere. May that man rot in HELL forever for what he did to me.
Whenever I consider purchasing something, if possible I read the reviews of the product of interest on Amazon.com. I find the buyer/user reviews on Amazon.com immensely helpful, particularly if they point out a product's faults or shortcomings. I think we can similarly create a website like that of Amazon.com, not to sell things, but with medical doctors as featured "items" and let their former and current patients record their own detailed critical reviews/opinions and rate each doctor. That's what I would do, as part of a system of quality assurance in the medical industry.
All it takes is one anonymous @!$%# with several log-ins, with a little bit of time on his hands to destroy a good physicians reputation and promote an absolutely horrible physician to star status on one of the "Rate your MD's" websites. Getting anonymous advice on a good book is one thing. Getting advice from some disgruntled patient who doesn't understand his disease process is something quite different.
But hey, if that's how you want to choose your physicians more power to you.
(sorry double post, I thought my comment got deleted but I'll leave it up)
Sure, if you trust the opinion of random strangers who may, or may not understand their disease process. And, before you say the average person is intelligent and honest enough to leave a useful critique...I invite you to peruse the offerings from the Vine for a few moments.
How many of these people would you take advice from to perform your surgery?
Medicine ain't buying a book at Amazon.
I agree, Harry. I hope it won't be long before we see the same thing for veterinarians and mental health counselors who are not physicians.
What about the doctor whose license is pulled in California and moves to Ohio. Shouldn't that Ohio patient know that his doctor is running a shell game?
For stupid's sake, such invasive Sherlockian investigatory tools, such draconian punishments against investigatory reporters with such altruistic motivations to 'protect' the uninformed public; Oh Horrors!
Mary K. Wakefield, maybe, just maybe you might consider encrypting the identifying bio data of bad docs; 64 bit, 128 bit or the updated PGP version or put the data in a restricted and password protected DB on another server and use existing laws against hackers to deter and/or punish data theft; certainly stolen data is not admissible in court.
Yet that bad doc database must be restored, must become a QA tool for MD improvement and become an effective determent tool for Md's identified by the database as provider outlier in complaints of medical misadventure. The database must become a tool, must be mined, measured and managed, nationally accepted and utilized as a tool for both determining and mandating MD educational needs to continue practicing with specific oversight reporting or prevent bad docs from practicing medicine. My past Hospital management experience and associating with doctors over a 25 year period repeatedly confirmed that doctors do a lousy job of self policing, basically because they have a "there I could be but for the grace of God' and luck". State licensing boards are even more egregiously lax in not protecting patient's rights or sometimes biased in favor of the doctor and notoriously lenient and deficient in enforcing the mediocre punishments they do impose.
Research the statistics on physicians and hospitals; it's available on the net. In a one year period, the study revealed that 50& of doctor diagnosis' were wrong, >50 % of MD prescriptions were wrong or ineffective against the diagnosed illness, 55+ % of all surgeries performed were medically unnecessary and 30 % were performed on the wrong patient or the wrong organ or the opposed limb. Hospitals are equally as MD's in providing deadly wrong medical services with over 88 thousand [88,000] dying as a result of hospital acquired nosocomial infections and equally remiss in gross medications errors leading to patient death and ensuring that the patient is delivered to the correct OR team and suite, had appropriate post-op care and returned to the same room that the patient occupied prior to surgery.
There is no such animal as a American coordinated Health Care System and while there are many thoroughly trained excellent physicians, the majority use the same methods they were taught in medical school, tend to accept Pharmaceutical reps advice about medication prescriptions as well as off label uses and receive points or paid invitations to so-called CEU seminars as rewards for # of prescriptions written for company's line of medications. As the Hospital CEO or Administrator I participated in medical staff QA committee meetings of the Hospital and repeatedly saw errors whitewashed, deemed insignificant or minor affect the patients overall health assessment and many times was unable to conduct committee business due to deliberate caused lack of a quorum.
The first rule of medical ethics is "Do no harm" however it is far more honored in the breech rather than followed. It absolutely true that becoming a MD is an exhausting, very expensive and lengthy effort and individuals that become licensed MD's are beset with AMA standards, many levels of government regulations bordering on medical 'how-to's rather than systemic usability and reform, constantly in conflict with Insurers over medical necessary interventions coupled with insurer dominance of payment for procedures then deliberate slow payment as well as payment hold back. The MD now face a sick [?] patient that, by and large, will have unrealistic expectations caused by medical providers' incessant and disingenuous TV advertising that touts theirs is better, acts quicker, costs less and tastes good; just tell your doctor to prescribe our product and you'll healed. Oh, I forgot to mention that the majority of Americans are the most non-compliant, misinformed and non-readers of the medication insert that mandated by the FDA and manufacturer provided that gives clear instructions for length of and daily use, warnings of and complications from mixing with other meds and/or foods; all of which are blissfully ignored by the non-reader. As soon as illness symptoms/discomfort go away or patient sick days run out regardless of the days prescribed, clearly shown on the medication container will stop taking it to 'save it for the next time' they feel sick and go back to work. When 'sick' comes back or the condition doesn't get better, somehow that becomes the doctor's fault and the next professional they consult is a lawyer. DOH
JBlntn said: "My past Hospital management experience and associating with doctors over a 25 year period repeatedly confirmed that doctors do a lousy job of self policing, basically because they have a "there I could be but for the grace of God' and luck". State licensing boards are even more egregiously lax in not protecting patient's rights or sometimes biased in favor of the doctor and notoriously lenient and deficient in enforcing the mediocre punishments they do impose."
How true, and how sad. But that mirrors my 15 years of experience with this. Unfortunately the same is true with other professions as well, not just physicians.
It is also sad that you can get more information about defects in home appliances than you can about about your physician's competence or conduct.
Can you rate essay service from Ukraine?
Dominatorgtx92 Student Jul 17, 12, 04:37AM | #1Joined: Jul 17, 12Threads: 1Posts: 2
My friends found a site dedicated to the essay.
Who can recommend a more sites?
Who can rate this website, it is a good service or bad?
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Never heard of it.mre Jul 17, 12, 08:13AM | #3Joined: Jul 14, 08Threads: 1Posts: 180
They are bad and frauds.Dominatorgtx92 Student Jul 17, 12, 09:07AM | #4Joined: Jul 17, 12Threads: 1Posts: 2
It USA service......MeoKhan Writer Jul 17, 12, 09:43AM | #5Joined: Jan 9, 11Threads: 5Posts: 1,359
On the WHOIS record, the company seems to be based in the US. However, this information can be very misleading. So, nobody can say where this company is "actually" located.mre Jul 17, 12, 01:38PM | #6Joined: Jul 14, 08Threads: 1Posts: 180
Dominatorgtx92:It USA service......
Did you not ask for my opinion? Why are you asking for other opinions when it seems as though you know more about the company than other posters? It actually seems as though you represent the company. Would I be correct in that assumption?
They are frauds.