Arizona court overturns decision of medical board

A physician denied due process at informal interview gets a new hearing; the state board says it has since implemented the judges' requirements.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Oct. 7, 2002.

Six years ago, Arizona thoracic surgeon Dale F. Webb, MD, felt as if he had been blindsided by his state medical board.

He got a letter in the mail telling him to report for an "informal interview" with the board in April 1996. The letter didn't tell him he could have declined to be interviewed and requested a full, formal hearing instead.

So he went to the "informal hearing." He didn't get a chance to ask questions of the physician who disagreed with the diagnostic measure Dr. Webb took with a patient who was diagnosed with cancer three months after visiting him. Board members told Dr. Webb he would have time to ask questions or respond to the expert who testified against him.

That time never came. At the end of the interview, the board found that Dr. Webb had engaged in "unprofessional conduct."

But Dr. Webb, believing that his due process rights had been trampled on, decided to challenge the board's decision. "It was intolerable," he said. "It was going to ruin the medical profession."

Shortly after the hearing, Dr. Webb filed a lawsuit in state court claiming that he had not received due process at the hearing. This summer, the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, agreed. In a rare ruling, the judges set aside the Arizona Medical Board's decision and remanded the case back to the board to hold a hearing that meets due process requirements outlined by the court in its opinion.

"Rarely do the courts get involved with what the state medical boards do," said Dale Austin, deputy executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Federation of State Medical Boards. "The courts aren't in a position of overturning medical board decisions. The frequency with which that occurs is pretty small." [...]