FSMB grants public access to its physician data bank

Information on disciplinary actions against physicians will now be available to the general public, but at a cost.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. March 5, 2001.

For nearly 40 years, the Federation of State Medical Boards has logged disciplinary actions against doctors into a data bank.

Until now, that information has been available only to hospitals, state medical boards, insurers and government agencies.

Prompted by increased public demand for doctor information, however, the federation has cracked open the vault, giving the public a peek at more than 115,000 actions by state medical boards against 35,000 physicians nationwide. For $9.95, anyone can tap into the Federation Physician Data Center and get a report on disciplinary action taken against a doctor.

"We feel we are the only organization that has this depth of information about medical board actions," said Dale L. Austin, federation deputy executive vice president and chief operating officer. "There's clearly a public interest in this kind of information."

In fact, there is such an interest that consumer groups have fought to make public another major source of information on actions against doctors -- the National Practitioner Data Bank.

Consumer advocate groups continue to push to open that data bank as a central location the public can use to check out physicians and dentists. The AMA and other physician groups oppose opening the data bank, arguing that malpractice information is a poor indicator of a physician's quality. Even skilled doctors, they say, can be the subjects of malpractice suits.

AMA President-elect Richard Corlin, MD, added that the data bank was established for use by boards and other agencies, not the general public. "You don't gather data that's supposed to be confidential, then say, 'We have the data, now it's not supposed to be confidential,' " said Dr. Corlin, who testified before Congress last year against opening the national data bank. [...]