Most of the doctors were not required to stop practicing, even temporarily, according to the group.
Public Citizen has been publishing national and regional editions of its Questionable Doctors database in book form for more than 10 year, and the group said the database is available on the Web for the first time.
Consumers will be able to search the list of disciplined doctors for free, and for a $10.00 fee, they can view and print detailed disciplinary reports on up to 10 individual doctors over a three-month period in any state listed.
The Web site currently contains information about doctors sanctioned by Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont.
More states will be added throughout the year.
Public Citizen criticized the Florida Board of Medicine's poor record of disciplining Florida doctors as the primary reason for putting the database online.
Public Citizen also has published a ranking of state medical boards, based on the number of serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 doctors in each state. In 2001, nationally there were 3.36 serious actions taken for every 1,000 physicians. Florida ranked No. 26 on the list, with 136 serious sanctions levied against 44,747 doctors, for a rate of 3.04 per 1,000 doctors.
Public Citizen has long sought greater consumer access to information about doctors, and there have been recent improvements in making that information available. Most state medical boards now provide some physician information on the Internet, but the information about disciplinary actions varies greatly, is often inadequate and can be difficult for people to access.
Information about doctor discipline, including state sanctions, hospital disciplinary actions and medical malpractice awards is now contained in the National Practitioner Data Bank, but that database is kept secret from the public.
With the addition Georgia and Alabama -- in addition to Florida -- the Questionable Doctors Web site now lists doctors in 16 states disciplined from 1992 through 2001. Information comes from all 50 state medical boards, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration. Previously listed physicians sanctioned in 1990 and 1991 were removed.
Using the information from the state and federal agencies, Public Citizen created a database containing the doctor's name, degree, license number, date of birth, location, the disciplinary state or agency, the date of the disciplinary action, the nature of the discipline and available information about the case.
Public Citizen asked all the state medical boards to provide information about court actions that may have been overruled or changed previous disciplinary actions. Any disciplinary actions that were overturned by courts or for which litigation ended in the doctor's favor were deleted from the database.
Public Citizen
