National rates of medical board disciplinary actions released

On April 19, Public Citizen, a consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, released its annual ranking of state medical boards. Hawaii ranked lowest in the rate of serious disciplinary actions taken against doctors from 2002-2004, while Wyoming ranked the highest. In 2004 there were 3,296 serious disciplinary actions taken by state medical boards, up 10.1 percent 2003.

The rate of serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 physicians was calculated based on data from the Federation of State Medical Boards. To compensate for the small number of doctors in some states and to more accurately gauge long-term trends, the group used a three-year average, whereas in previous years only the data from the most recent year was used. The three-year state disciplinary rates ranged from 1.44 to 10.04 serious actions per 1,000 physicians.

"Most states are not living up to their obligations to protect patients from doctors who are not practicing medicine in the best manner and are thus endangering the lives and health of residents," said Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "Serious attention must be given to finding out which of the above variables are deficient in each state. Then action must be taken, legislatively and through pressure on the medical boards, to increase the amount of discipline and, thus, the amount of patient protection."

Five of the 15 lowest-ranking states, (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Tennessee, Delaware and Hawaii) have been in the bottom 15 states for the past 10 three-year periods.