WASHINGTON: Medical authorities, despite recent attempts at reform, still fail to identify or discipline most incompetent doctors who are harming patients, investigators for the Department of Health and Human Services say.
The report by the inspector general’s office said state medical boards took strong action against only 678 physicians in 1984.
The disclosure means that state boards placed on probation, suspended or revoked the licenses of less than 4 percent of the 20,000 to 45,000 doctors thought to be mentally ill, drug abusers, alcoholics or criminals by the Federation of State Medical Boards.
HHS Secretary Otis Bowen, who released the findings during a speech in New York on Thursday, also criticized physicians or organizations for failing to report cases of questionable care.
“This study has found,” he told graduates of the New York University School of Medicine, “that strikingly few of the cases that state medical boards investigate come to their attention from medical societies, hospitals, peer review groups and individual practitioners.”
In one example, Dr. Stanley Dratler was allowed to become gynecology Chief at St. Louis Regional Medical Center in July 1985 because the Missouri board was unaware that patients had filed 32 complaints against him. The complaints, accusing Dratler of fonding patients as young as 14 years old during exams in St. Louis and Dade City, Fla., had not been forwarded to the Missouri board by the St. Louis University. Medical School or the state board of Florida, said David Brydon, attorney for the Missouri Board.
Dratler was not identified by name in the report, but Brydon identified him. Brydon said the Missouri board intends to seek an injunction that would Keep Dratler, who voluntarily discontinued practice in Missouri in late 1985, from resuming practice in the state.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 30, 1986
