Doctors Are Frustrated, Thwarted in Their Efforts at Housecleaning

Recently, the newspapers have reported several indictments of Orange County physicians. While these proceedings obviously involve a small fraction of the doctors who care for our county’s citizens, it does raise questions about the role of organized medicine in exposing and disciplining physicians whose conduct falls below the community’s standard.

The sad fact is that too often, medical professionals do know who these physicians are, but the system, the American system of justice, hamstrings an effective and quick elimination of the few impaired physicians from practice.

Any citizen can report perceived problems in medical care to the Medical Board of California, which has a local office in Santa Ana. In fact, individual physicians and the medical society have made numerous reports to the board over the years, including those concerning the physicians who have recently come to public attention. But neither physicians nor the medical society has the power to restrict any physician’s ability to practice medicine. Only the state or the courts have that power.

Of the thousands of inquiries the medical board receives, its few investigators are able to be aggressive on only a few more blatant offenders. The medical society and physicians in the community have willingly served on judgment panels and provided information and testimony as needed.

In addition, the medical society has a public service committee and an ethics committee that hears consumer or physician concerns in Orange County. The hospitals have credentialing committees and review processes that identify problem physicians who can then be reported to the State Medical Board of California.

The public has a role here, too. It should be a conscientious consumer without going on a witch hunt. If your treatment seems inappropriate or too good to be true, it probably is.

Most physicians do not take lightly their role in the maintenance of the public’s health, whether it be by prescribing appropriate therapy, performing required surgery or helping the state and the courts remove the few misguided practitioners from the practice of medicine.

LAURENCE D. WELLIKSON, MD

Orange

Wellikson is a member of the Orange County Medical Assn. Board of Trustees.