Notes from Your Licensing Board
The Fall 2013 issue of “Notes from Your Licensing Board” came in not long ago and I have to share it. It is from the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine (I kept that one for now) and it is so disgusting. The first page is as above. It starts out with Adverse Actions and then lists name after name. It is like some the old-fashioned technique of parading criminals around to scare others. Why not put them in the public square with chains? And this is the Licensing Board? There are only four pages to this piece of crap and it is nothing but doctors names who they “got”. The board must be so proud. They are like the modern-day G-men. It is only on half of the last page that they list their meeting schedule and some other crap. Let it be known, the Board does NOT represent or help doctors in any way. We pay them to punish us. Don’t get me wrong, there are bad apples in any profession but I have seem more bogus stuff be investigated and penalized than need be. Sickening, that is my conclusion.
Not only are you paying the Board to bully you, likely you are OVERpaying the Board, with physician license revenue beyond the Board’s budget, and surplus going to the Governor’s slush fund.
Yes it hurts when patients make trivial or absurd complaints to the Medical Board, and they have to investigate: I had one who complained that I did not give her opiates on demand, and alleged that I tried to hit her. The absurdity of it was that she also demanded that I take her back as a patient. But I was also caught up peripherally in a complaint by a patient who was given repeats of pain medication over the phone by a doctor who did not diagnose the septic hip. That complaint was appropriate, and I am glad that doctor was taken out. So to get rid of those who would give medicine a bad name, we have to put up with stupid complaints from the “entitled”. Maybe the medical boards can improve their processes, and should identify in more detail what the doctors were convicted of but the page from Maine has at least some cases that look justified.
I’m expecting a subpoena from my Board thanks to a would-be patient this week who refused to believe that Family Planning Medicaid would not cover her “annual”. She said she would be reporting me to the Board of Medicine because I didn’t know how to bill Medicaid properly. Was I glad that the doctor-patient relationship was never established for this one.
From the patients’ point of view, there are way too many stories of doctors who weren’t disciplined for real offenses, that’s why you are seeing what you are seeing. People do want to know (and truly do have a right) to see what the offenses are for. If you have someone who made a clerical error that didn’t affect patient care, why not let patients see it? They’ll figure out if it is bogus or not. If an error, or series of them in my case, lead you to serious harm, people need to know. The reason why is that education will happen if that’s true.
Btw, I do tell my coworkers of my mistakes, I ask questions. I ask that they learn from what I went thru. Yes, believe it or not, they do listen and take heed.
I find that a number of mistakes are due to education. How H&P was done or not, believing that the labs tell everything when they don’t, etc. Things that can be rectified UNLESS the doctor has an ego problem. Those are the ones who are just going to make life worse for everyone unless they are educated and helped past the ego. They’ll make things worse for the profession as a whole, and for the groups they serve in and under.
When what you do affect people’s lives, yes, it is going to be public and should. Not everyone is a lawsuit waiting to happen. A number of us would like apologies, fix the problem. That’s what I asked of the first doctor who made a mistake with me. He didn’t want to do it, so now I have a number of those involved because of that. Did his admin (several levels up) hear about it? Yes, and so have others. All for doing something that appears to be against law. Some major fines for the group, but that is what happened (and still is) when ego is there and the refusal to educate happens and admin cover up.
Do you want someone like that as a representative of your professional, your Oath, and of the groups?
Yes, there are bad eggs but just like any pendulum, this has swung too far. Please see my entry about how I was investigated for not treating a virus with an antibiotic. Pt was upset and the board didn’t let it go for a while.
Fine, you can speak in anecdotes and so can I: I have seen a number of complaints and outright harassment in which ego was not the factor, and the angry, vengeful patient would not be placated despite there being no lasting negative outcome.
You said of something affecting peoples’ lives “…yes, its going to be public and should.” A good argument can be made for that stance, which is clearly what society has chosen. But as suggested by the tone of your post, the presumption is one of fault on the part of the doctor. Therefore, I presume that all patients are potential complaints to a board, litigants and threats to my livelihood. It makes the physician feel hunted, and preemptively destroys whatever trust might have existed. Being a masochist is not part of any “oath” I ever took.
Ain’t just you in the USA. The board in Oz, not happy with having a searchable database of all doctors and their registration and possible sanctions or restrictions… they want to make sure it is accessible to a Google database.To me that sounds like the stocks in the town square, all the have to to is add a Facebook presence and that will include the buckets of rotten tomatoes to throw at us in the stocks….
Which is worst being a Pedophile or being a doctor who has sanctions?
As I was receiving my degree in medicine, I didn’t feel them tattooing a bullseye on my back, but its there all the same.
We are so often told by so many how much doctors are valued and trusted; yet we are always scrutinized, tested, charged, mistrusted, blamed, and lied about. The farce of state licensing boards being all about “protecting the public” is just one in a series of insults for which physicians are supposed to be grateful. My former office partner actually had to do community service for a freakin’ clerical error (thanks EHR), and worked her time off -true story – in a charity cat clinic emptying used kitty litter. That is how physicians are valued today.