Renegade Medical Boards

I am delighted to see Scott Jensen go after the Minnesota Board of Medicine (MNBOMP) for singling him out time and again on issues that really have no basis in damage to patients. Instead, the MNBOMP is interested in keeping any disagreement with its notion of good healthcare policy silent. And they are willing to try to take a physician’s license to do so.

On another front, Kris Held has noted the state of Texas is considering legislation to protect physicians from the Texas medical board. It’s about time.

Pam Wible recently posted that three U.S. Senators have requested a Department of Justice investigation of discrimination against physicians by medical boards.

For years I have tried to interest journalists in the machinations of state medical boards, but all they really want to do is castigate doctors sanctioned by medical boards. In my experience, journalists have no interest in how medical boards operate. For this reason, the public is left with the erroneous impression that state medical boards exist first and foremost to protect the public from bad doctors.

Wrong.

State medical boards are politically motivated. Patients don’t realize they are considered property by corporate medicine. If a physician leaves a medical hospital and clinic to open his or her independent practice and patients follow the doctor, the physician is regarded as stealing corporate property. The medical conglomerate will go after that physician’s license. It’s as simple as that.  

         In 1989, I left my obstetrical practice in a multi-specialty medical group to practice independently. In the first month, 164 pregnant women followed me to my new practice. Note that these women followed me by their own choice. If they had wanted to, they could have transferred their care to a different doctor in my old clinic.

Within a few hours after receipt of my June 1989 resignation letter, the CMO  (chief medical officer) for the group called and asked whether I was leaving town. I said “no.” Within an hour, the CMO appeared in my office unannounced, pulled me into an exam room, shut the door, and said in a quiet voice, “I will ruin you. You cannot quit. I’ll employ you for two months, not allow you to work, fire you, and wreck your practice.”  No, I didn’t make this up.

     This CMO was well known for bullying other practitioners. He would present to individual and small group practices and coerce them into selling their practices to his corporate group. If they resisted, he threatened to set up a clinic across the street to force them out of business.

     Within three days, on June 4, 1989, I was back at work without missing any deliveries. My lawyer said North Dakota is a right to work state. He called the lawyers for the CMO’s company and stopped the CMO’s plan. My medical malpractice agent said he would give me a policy that I could pay when I got the money. Things were obviously easier back then when a deal could be made with a handshake.

In my first month of practice as an independent, I delivered 46 babies. My mothers and babies did well. On one those days I delivered six babies in three different hospitals.

     It took the CMO eleven years to carry out his threat to put me out of business. He became chairman of the state medical board and went after my medical license. It took this CMO that long to find a convicted felon who had been in the state penitentiary for theft by deception. She had no problem lying about having a personal relationship with me. The judge thought her affidavit asserting she was telling the truth was compelling. The CMO then made sure he chaired both medical board investigative committees and signed all medical board documents sanctioning me.

         The frosting on the cake? The lawyer for the medical board threatened to revoke the probation of the one witness who was going to testify for me. No, I am not making this up.

     This is not to say that no doctors should be removed from practice, but medical boards err in punishing doctors who don’t need to be punished and err by not punishing doctors who cause death and destruction. In my experience, these actions are seldom random. Independent doctors who have no representation on medical boards are often punished severely for small matters that have little bearing on real patient safety. Worst of all, this is all done in secret, without due process, and without responsibility to anybody, even the states which created the boards.

         In one case a physician took the actions of the North Dakota medical board to the state supreme court. The court’s decision was that the state supreme court had no authority over the state medical board. The physician would have to go to the state legislature regarding the state medical board’s actions. Eh?

         It’s time to publicly acknowledge that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the public is often harmed by the medical boards charged with protecting them. This harm is seldom recognized because the boards act in secret and free from any consequences to themselves for any of their actions.

     Currently there is no oversight of medical boards and nobody to document the damage they do to patients with their decisions. Defining and overseeing medical board activity is a function of state legislatures. State legislatures should provide for some form of oversight and due process for the physicians medical boards go after. Damage to the public in terms of diminished access to healthcare, increased illness, or death is currently not taken into consideration in medical board consideration. 

         No one is watching the real damage these decisions do to patients. It’s time someone started tabulating the results to patients of the loss of a physician, especially in rural areas. I suspect it is far greater than anyone cares to acknowledge.