Boards of Medicine Accountability

https://doctorsofcourage.org/boards-of-medicine/

One of the arms of attack on doctors treating pain and the patients they treat is the state board of medicine. They need to be held accountable for their inexcusable actions over the last 20 years.

The state boards of medicine are attacking doctors treating pain more than any other reason. And most of their attacks are unwarranted. So what is their purpose?  I contend that their purpose is purely monopolistic—to cull out the independent/minority physicians in competition with the hospital/large medical group practices. I also contend that the medical boards are in collusion with the government to eliminate those doctors treating the populations of citizens that the government would rather see dead—the elderly, uninsured, government insured, disabled, minority, or poor.

So how are they getting away with this, and what can we do about it?  First, we have to understand the purpose of the medical board. As stated by the AMA in their Journal of Ethics,

“State medical boards are the agencies that license medical doctors, investigate complaints, discipline physicians who violate the medical practice act, and refer physicians for evaluation and rehabilitation when appropriate. The overriding mission of medical boards is to serve the public by protecting it from incompetent, unprofessional, and improperly trained physicians, ensuring that only qualified physicians are licensed to practice medicine and that those physicians provide their patients with a high standard of care.”

The medical board evaluates a physician’s professional conduct or ability to practice medicine by reviewing complaints from patients, malpractice data, information from hospitals, and reports from government agencies. The state statute commonly known as the medical practice act defines unprofessional conduct in each state. Although laws vary by jurisdiction some examples of unprofessional conduct include:

• physical abuse of a patient,
• inadequate record keeping,
• not recognizing or acting on common symptoms,
• prescribing drugs in excessive amounts without legitimate reason,
• impaired ability to practice due to addiction,
• failing to meet continuing medical education requirements,
• performing duties beyond the scope of a license,
• dishonesty,
• conviction of a felony,
• inappropriately delegating the practice of medicine to an unlicensed individual.

Medical boards are supposed to focus on protecting the public, not on punishing physicians. Most problems can be resolved with additional education or training in appropriate areas. In other instances, it may be more appropriate to place physicians on probation or place restrictions on a physician’s license. This compromise allows the public to be protected while maintaining a valuable community resource in the physician. Probation and restrictions of a medical license can also be in place while a physician receives further training or rehabilitation.

I have researched the actions of the Virginia Board of Medicine over the last 20 years. And what I’ve found out is that, for the most part, doctors investigated for prescribing opioids have their abilities to do so taken away from them and eventually lose their license. The information is available HERE.

Comparing the actions of the Virginia Medical Board with the above stated purpose, I have identified the following:

Although there are ten reasons for investigation or censure, two (prescribing controlled drugs and impaired ability to practice due to addiction) involve over half of the board actions. And about half of those (the doctors addicted), don’t get their licenses suspended until they fail the PHMP, which all of them eventually do because conventional treatment doesn’t cure addiction.  So the group of doctors affected most are those prescribing controlled drugs, especially opioids. And the reasons behind the censure isn’t because the prescribing has harmed the patient in any way, but simply because the government propaganda against opioids gives the Boards of Medicine a door through which they can eliminate doctors of their choice.

Doctors and patients need to understand this problem and help rectify it. You can do so by doing what I have done for the state of Virginia—create a data sheet similar to the Complete list on Virginia Board of Medicine Attacks and send it to us.

As doctors from each state see how their medical board is constructed to eliminate them from the profession, we should have good justification for taking legal action.  So be a part of the solution and help, not a part of the problem.

 

 

Filed under: General Problems