WASHINGTON – Maryland continued to have one of the worst rates in the nation for disciplining doctors in 2003, according to a study of state medical boards released Wednesday by Public Citizen.
“Maryland has been at the bottom for a very long time,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s health research group.
But Wolfe and others said they expect to see Maryland’s standing improve in coming years, after the much-criticized Board of Physician Quality Assurance was dissolved last year and replaced by a new Board of Physicians with more power to go after doctors.
“They changed the law that required the board to get permission from the state Maryland medical society for them to discipline the doctor,” Wolfe said.
That has not always been the case. Public Citizen said that Maryland took serious disciplinary action against 46 doctors in 2003, a rate of two actions for every 1,000 physicians — ranking the state 42nd in the country. The national average was 3.55 serious disciplinary actions for every 1,000 physicians.
Wolfe said it would be great if states like Maryland could get up to the level of enforcement found in Kentucky, the toughest state in the Public Citizen ranking, with 11.58 actions per 1,000 physicians.
“Kentucky was disciplining between five and six times more doctors per 1,000 doctors in that year more than Maryland did,” he said.
The report considered serious disciplinary action to include license revocations and suspensions.
Calls to MedChi, the state’s medical society, were not returned Wednesday. A spokesman for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said he was unable to find someone from the Board of Physicians to comment on the report.
In the past, state health officials have said that Maryland’s rating is misleading, because many doctors are licensed in the state, but practice elsewhere.
But Wolfe said that is no defense — it just means doctors can receive a license to practice in Maryland even if they have had disciplinary actions against them in other states.
“This is why it becomes a health hazard to patients if they live in a state where the medical board — as is the case in Maryland, or has been — is not doing an adequate job in disciplining doctors,” Wolfe said.
State Sen. Paula Hollinger, D-Baltimore County, who led the fight to reform physician discipline in the state, said Wednesday that she was encourage by Maryland’s 42nd-place finish in this year’s report.
“We were 46th last year, we are four places better this year,” Hollinger said. “We have a brand new board, and maybe it’s having a little bit of an effect.”
She said she is willing to give the new board the benefit of the doubt.
“I hope that they do their job,” Hollinger said, referring to the new licensing board. “The other board wasn’t doing their job. Nobody was getting disciplined.”
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