Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
How often does your state medical board search doctors in the National Practitioner Data Bank?
Surprisingly not often, according to data provided to the Association of Health Care Journalists by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, which runs the data bank.
Get a spreadsheet showing how often each state medical board searches for doctors in the National Practitioner Data Bank. One worksheet shows information about physicians, the other shows information about residents and interns.
AHCJ and other media groups have been pushing the government to restore unfettered access to the Public Use File of the data bank, citing important stories that journalists have written about lax oversight of doctors by state medical boards.
State medical boards have access to complete information within the data bank about a doctor’s disciplinary history, hospital sanctions and malpractice payouts. The Public Use File, which had been available to reporters and researchers for years, provided the same information without identifying information about the doctors involved.
HRSA removed the Public Use File from its website on Sept. 1 following complaints from a doctor that a reporter from The Kansas City Star inappropriately used it to identify him. The agency restored the file last week, but with new restrictions that seek to bar reporters from using it with other data sets to identify physicians. AHCJ and other media groups call the new restrictions unworkable and an unconstitutional prior restraint.
AHCJ requested data from HRSA so reporters could see how often their states check the backgrounds of MDs and DOs, as well as interns and residents. The numbers are available in two different charts. Beyond that, HRSA said, three state boards have a relationship with HRSA in which they automatically get updates when new information is entered on a physician. They are: Nevada (DO), Oregon (MD) and Pennsylvania (MD).
“I encourage journalists to look up their state medical boards in our chart and see how often they consult the data bank,” AHCJ President Charles Ornstein said. “If they are not looking physicians up, they should be asked how they are sure they are protecting the public from dangerous or incompetent doctors.”
HRSA spokesman Martin Kramer said in an email that,
HRSA is also working proactively to protect the public by reducing potential barriers for State licensing boards to receive NPDB information.
One step that HRSA took in the past year was to conduct a small pilot study with the Federation of State Medical Boards to determine if hospitals and medical malpractice payers send a copy of the NPDB report, as required, to the licensing board.
To assure that Medical Boards receive the hospital and medical malpractice payment reports, in January 2012 the reporters (hospitals and medical malpractice payers) will be able to send an electronic copy to the State medical board through the NPDB.
We believe this change will be cost saving and time effective for the reporters and State medical boards.”
For more background, this timeline tracks the story:
Agreement lets disciplined nurses work in 24 states
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Nursing, Public records
ProPublica’s Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein are back on the disciplined caregivers beat, this time cooperating with USA Today to expose a licensing gap that makes it easier for disciplined nurses to find work in other states. The licensing agreement in question was signed a decade ago as 24 states agreed to recognize each other’s licenses in an attempt to alleviate care shortages by allowing nurses to work where they are needed most.
In some cases, nurses have retained clean multistate licenses after at least one compact state had banned them. They have ignored their patients’ needs, stolen their pain medication, forgotten crucial tests or missed changes in their condition, records show.
Critics say the compact may actually multiply the risk to patients. There is no central licensing for the compact, so policing nurses is left to the vigilance of member states.
Outside the compact, each state licenses and disciplines its own nurses. But within it, states effectively agree to allow in nurses they have never reviewed.
Ornstein and Weber found numerous instances in which a caregiver disciplined in one state was able to work for an extended period in another without being red-flagged, and are helping spark a debate over the costs, benefits and implementations of such agreements.
ProPublica guides reporters to check local boards
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Nursing, Public records, Tools
For those of you who have followed the ongoing investigation ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber have done into nurses and whether states are reporting disciplinary actions, you might have a chance to localize the story.
ProPublica has posted a guide, “Reporting Recipe: How You Can Investigate Your State’s Oversight of Its Nurses and Other Licensed Professionals,” to help reporters and the public check up on what’s happening in their states.
ProPublica editor-in-chief Paul Steiger and managing editor Stephen Engelberg, explain why they are providing the reporters’ techniques and insights:
We hope that others will use the techniques created by Ornstein and Weber to hold local officials accountable. Reporters who look into the local boards that oversee nurses or other health professionals will make new discoveries, some of which will undoubtedly go beyond what we have found. That, in turn, will help others push the story ahead. We hope statehouse reporters, beat reporters, general assignment reporters, bloggers, citizen journalists and others will use this road map.
Use the state-by-state guide prepared by Ornstein (also president of AHCJ’s board of directors) and Weber that shows what information is available to the public in each state and specific things to look for in the records.
They have used the data to identify some states that appear to be inconsistent in reporting disciplinary actions against medical professionals. If you are covering any of these states, you should probably be looking into the story yourself:
- Florida
- Georgia
- Illinios
- Indiana
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- Mississippi
- New Jersey
- Ohio
- Tennessee
- Wisconsin
- West Virginia
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