State Ranks 34th in Disciplining Doctors
California’s rate of doctor discipline ranked lower than that of 33 other states in 1994, according to a national survey released Thursday.
The survey, compiled by the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, was part of a study of punishment meted out against doctors for incompetence, criminal convictions, sexual misconduct with patients, drug and alcohol abuse and other offenses from 1986 through 1994.
Nationally, 13,012 medical doctors were disciplined during that period, about 2% of the physicians in the country, the researchers said. The names of the doctors are listed in a book, also released Thursday by the Washington-based group.
What the rankings for 1994 mean is that problem physicians in California were less likely to face a serious disciplinary action than they would be if they practiced in Kentucky, Oklahoma or numerous other states with a higher rate of actions against doctors, said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe of Public Citizen.
California filed 3.28 serious actions for each 1,000 doctors, compared to a national average of 4.3 actions per 1,000 physicians. The 270 serious disciplinary actions handed out during 1994 touched just 0.3% of the state’s physicians.
“Unless you believe that doctors in California are much better than those practicing in other states, which I don’t, the rate of discipline should be much higher,” Wolfe said from his Washington office.
California was criticized in the survey for taking three to four years to take disciplinary action against problem doctors. The study singled out the case of Ivan C. Namihas, a former Tustin gynecologist, whose license was revoked in 1992 after the state Medical Board received complaints from more than 160 former patients who claimed that he had sexually abused them. The report said the first formal complaint against Namihas had been made to the Medical Board in 1975.
Ron Joseph, executive director of the Medical Board, said the criticism over filing delays was based on 1994 cases. Those were cases that had been put into the system in 1990 or 1991, when the board indeed was slower in reacting to complaints against problem physicians, Joseph said. But he said the board has since undergone a major restructuring.
The result, he said, was a reduction of the time between the receipt of a complaint about a doctor and the filing of a disciplinary action to 18 months.
The study was based on disciplinary actions taken by the state Medical Board, federal health care agencies and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It showed that serious disciplinary actions were taken against 1,350 California doctors between 1986 and 1994. Just over 51% had their medical license suspended or revoked, and 43% were put on probation. The rest received some other form of disciplinary action.
