Group Fights Plan to Give Patients Data on Doctors : Medicine: Consumer advocates support California Medical Board’s broad new disclosure rules. But physicians say their privacy is being violated.

Arguing for doctors’ privacy rights, the state’s most powerful organization of physicians is trying to stop a month-old California Medical Board policy that allows patients access to a broad array of information about doctors.

The California Medical Assn. went to court last week seeking a permanent injunction against the new policy.

It contends that the board made two mistakes in implementing the policy: First, it failed to follow the state’s formal procedures for making rules and, second, it violated the state Constitution’s privacy law by reporting about cases turned over to the state attorney general’s office for possible disciplinary action.

A hearing on the CMA’s request has been scheduled for Nov. 24 in Sacramento Superior Court.

Under the new disclosure policy, the medical board for the first time will tell consumers more than just the status of a physician’s license or whether the doctor faces disciplinary charges.

The new policy allows the agency to reveal whether a doctor has ever been convicted of a felony or disciplined by California or any other state or whether a physician has been subject to malpractice judgments over $30,000.

The most controversial provision in the policy--and one that consumer advocates say is the most important--allows the agency to disclose when it has recommended the filing of disciplinary charges against a doctor with the attorney general’s office.

In the past, the agency only disclosed such information when the attorney general decided to file a formal accusation.

The CMA lawsuit has touched off a bitter exchange with consumer groups, which for years have been seeking broader disclosure of information about physicians. The CMA represents 33,000 of the state’s 76,841 licensed doctors.

Consumer advocates accuse the CMA of trying to scuttle one of the nation’s most liberal physician disclosure policies and of discouraging other states from copying California’s policy.

“California is very much at the forefront among the states in terms of public disclosure and the CMA is trying to move it backward. It is acting like a grubby trade association, protecting the doctors, and the patients be damned,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Washington-based Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

Equally angry is Dixon Arnett, the medical board’s executive director, who advocated the new disclosure policy on behalf of Gov. Pete Wilson. Calling the lawsuit “arrogant and specious,” Arnett maintains that the CMA’s real motive is to stall the new disclosure policy as long as possible while the medical board completes the lengthy rule-making procedure.

CMA officials insist, though, that they are not opposed to everything in the new policy. But they want the medical board to follow formal procedures, which require public hearings and provide a mechanism for appealing the final decision.

“The intention is not to stall,” CMA lobbyist Timothy Shannon said. “It is not to kill disclosure. Our intention is to make (board members) do it right.”

Proof of that, he says, is the CMA’s support for a new reform law that becomes effective Jan. 1. The law includes most of the disclosures that are in the medical board policy.

But Shannon said the new law requires the medical board to incorporate the disclosure requirements into formal regulations--which require public hearings--and also provides that if it does not do so by the summer of 1995 the disclosure requirements will become effective anyway.

However, one key disclosure provision is not in the new law. It is the one notifying the public when a case has been referred to the attorney general. Shannon said the CMA believes such disclosure is unfair because the attorney general does not always accept the agency’s recommendation.

If the public is told a doctor is being recommended for disciplinary action but no accusation is filed, the doctor’s reputation would be unfairly damaged, Shannon said.

But the medical board’s Arnett said that his agency only sends cases to the attorney general after it has conducted a thorough investigation, and that the attorney general files charges about 98% of the time.

He said patients have a right to know if their doctors may soon face charges for incompetence or neglect.

Arnett acknowledged that the new law requires the adoption of regulations. He said, however, that it could be months--even years--before the formal rule-making process is completed.

In the meantime, Arnett said, the board has the power to establish a policy that will make the disclosure available to consumers so they will not have to wait for the adoption of formal regulations.