Medical Board to Review Closed Cases : Physicians: Action is in response to CHP report that said panel stopped other investigations of doctors’ alleged misconduct.

Moving to restore confidence in the state’s much-criticized doctor discipline system, the executive director of the California Medical Board announced Friday that he has ordered a review of all recently closed cases that involve either a patient death or dismemberment or accusations that a physician engaged in sexual misconduct.

Acknowledging that his action was prompted by a California Highway Patrol investigation that criticized the board’s handling of complaints against doctors, Dixon Arnett said the review would involve 200 to 300 cases that were investigated and closed in the last two years.

Arnett said it would take three to four months to review all the cases and determine which, if any, should be reopened.

“We’ve been brought under scrutiny by the press (because) of the CHP report and therefore we’re looking back at ourselves to make sure that we are doing as good a job as we can,” said board President Jacquelin Trestrail, a San Diego physician.

The 31-page CHP report, released Jan. 20 by Wilson Administration officials, found that top managers at the board had inappropriately ordered the closure of hundreds of cases in 1990 in an apparent attempt to reduce an investigative backlog that had provoked legislative criticism.

Arnett said the review of recent case closures announced Friday will be conducted in addition to re-examining the 1990 cases referred to in the CHP report. He said five of those cases involving patients’ complaints against medical personnel at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles have since been reopened.

The report, while praised for its thoroughness by the Wilson Administration, came under attack Friday from veteran members of the medical board who said it unfairly depicted the agency as inept and inefficient.

“The public feels that somehow members of this board have been coddling and wrist-slapping doctors. I think this is a gross misconception and overstatement,” said board member Madison Richardson, a Los Angeles physician.

Raymond Mallel, a public member of the board, accused the Wilson Administration of exaggerating the importance of the CHP report to further a political agenda that called for the disciplinary agency to be taken over by the Department of Consumer Affairs.

“The attempt to hype the importance of the CHP report is only a pretext to disassemble the board,” he said.

Sandra Smoley, the secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency, insisted, however, that Gov. Pete Wilson had no desire for the board to be absorbed by the Department of Consumer Services, which she oversees.

She described Wilson as being “very aggressive” on consumer protection issues. In that spirit, she said the Administration had asked for the CHP investigation, believing that any accusation that consumers were not being adequately protected should be “looked at thoroughly.” The CHP undertook the investigation because the state attorney general represents the board and had a conflict of interest.

The accusations that the cases were improperly closed had been brought to the attention of Consumer Affairs Department Director Jim Conran by a union representing the agency’s investigators.

Arnett, who has held the executive director’s job three weeks, said the CHP report had undermined public confidence in the board’s ability to police the medical profession. He said he hoped a re-examination of closed cases would assure patients that complaints were being thoroughly investigated.

The cases targeted for review, he said, are those involving serious allegations that had been closed after the board’s staff determined that there was either no wrongdoing or that there was not enough evidence to support charges.

Also in response to the CHP report, Arnett said he would fire two implicated officials and temporarily suspend two others.