Outrageous Abuse of the Public Trust : Medical Board has long failed to properly address complaints about doctors, inquiry finds

A key defense that California consumers have against incompetent doctors is complaining to the state Medical Board, which licenses and polices medical professionals. Or so it is in theory. In reality, the California Medical Board had been falling down for years in its responsibility to protect the public--and its poor performance was recently documented in a shocking report by the California Highway Patrol.

The CHP was brought in to investigate because the attorney general’s office was considered to have a conflict of interest, in that it represents the Medical Board. The important element here is not who conducted the investigation. What’s important is what the 31-page investigation report revealed, and how the state reacted.

The investigation found appalling mismanagement and lax enforcement that made for, as one Wilson Administration official put it, “an outrageous abuse of the public trust.” Top officials of the board in 1990 ordered the dismissal or destruction of hundreds of complaints against doctors in an attempt to erase a backlog that threatened the board’s funding from the Legislature. Among the cases closed, according to the report, were patients’ complaints against medical personnel at Martin Luther King/ Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles who were accused of having been “culpable in the deaths of five patients.”

The heroes in this case are the Medical Board investigators, who went to their union, and a watchdog organization, the University of San Diego’s Center for Public Interest Law. Both groups then approached the Wilson Administration, which in turn asked the CHP to investigate. To his credit, Gov. Pete Wilson already has replaced 11 of the 19 board members, as well as the executive director.

The Wilson Administration rightly moved swiftly to investigate the complaints of mismanagement and improper activity at the board. But there’s more that needs to be done to restore confidence in this crucial state agency.

The medical board system, as currently set up, is flawed. For one thing, although physicians must be involved in helping determine whether a doctor performed properly, the board now is too physician-dominated; medicine and the law must work in concert to determine how best to move against medical professionals who abuse patients’ trust. And surely the board must reform its disclosure policies, so that the public can easily find out about a medical professional’s past malpractice judgments, convictions and license revocations.

Gov. Wilson has voiced opposition to legislation that would reform the board, asking for time to give his newly appointed members a chance. But no matter who sits on the board, its operational setup needs rethinking. The governor needs to reconsider his position.