TIME TO GO BEYOND THE "QUESTIONABLE DOCTORS" REPORTS

By Nicholas Regush

I’d like to salute Public Citizen for its reports on "questionable doctors." The latest issue released yesterday focuses on 1,111 doctors "who have been disciplined by Texas’s state medical board and other agencies for incompetence, misprescribing drugs, sexual misconduct, criminal convictions, ethical lapses and other offences." Public citizen also informs that, "most of the doctors were not required to stop practicing, even temporarily."

The good news is that this information is online and anyone who wants to pay $10 can do some checking. It might be nice to know that your doctor is not a sexual predator or a junkie.

Public Citizen also makes a point of stirring things up about these "questionable doctors." The consumer advocacy group criticized the Texas Board of Medical Examiners for the lame manner in which it discipline Texas doctors. Perhaps lame is too kind a word. "Dangerously lenient," is how Dr. Sidney Wolfe put it. He is director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and is known to growl a fair amount when he believes something is terribly unfair. He’s a good man, an old friend and I like him to be on my side.

Having saluted the effort, let me now try to offer good reasons why this regular Public Citizen-led public humiliation of "questionable doctors" should be vastly expanded to include corruption, particularly conflict-of-interest. For my taste, the entire current effort lacks real bite. The medical boards will get into line when hell freezes over. You can criticize them all you want. Their job is to protect the reputations of doctors. So why only target them and a relatively small number of "questionable doctors." I’d go after a greatly expanded list of doctors who have sold out to the drug and medical devices industries.

Let’s tally how much money in the way of special consulting fees, cash incentives, gifts (including trips to Bali), and career sponsorships each doctor acquires over a period of a year. Let’s put that all online, so everyone can see. Frankly, a doctor’s conflicts of interest may be as dangerous to patients as someone who now qualifies for the current "questionable doctor" category.

Corruption is now so wide-spread in medicine that nothing short of extensive public humiliation of offenders will do anything to turn the tide. And we shouldn’t be shy about this. Lives are on the line.

It’s only a matter of time.

Read the Public Citizen press release

Go online to check on doctors