News in brief - Aug. 22, 2011

California slow to discipline physicians

More than 700 California doctors sanctioned for poor care by hospitals, HMOs and other private health care organizations during the last two decades have faced no disciplinary action from the state's medical board.

More than half of the 1,312 California physicians who had clinical privilege disciplinary actions against them reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank between 1990 and 2009 avoided state medical board discipline, according to an analysis of public records by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and reported to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown in an Aug. 9 letter (www.citizen.org/letter-regarding-performance-of-medical-board-of-california).

The Medical Board of California is chronically short-staffed, and its examiners do not have permission to see the names of physicians reported to the practitioner databank to follow up on the disciplinary actions, a board spokeswoman said. The state has borrowed millions of dollars from the board and has not repaid the money, said Paul Phinney, MD, a pediatrician who chairs the California Medical Assn.'s board of trustees. "The medical board's been robbed of the resources it needs to do its job," he said. Dr. Phinney also said many of the actions reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank are relatively minor and do not involve patient harm.

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North Carolina considers compensating eugenics victims

The estimated 3,000 surviving victims of North Carolina's eugenic sterilization program should be compensated with a lump sum of money and receive mental health services, said a task force appointed by Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.

About 7,600 North Carolinians deemed unfit to reproduce were forcibly sterilized between 1929 and 1974 during "a shameful period in our history," said the panel's Aug. 1 report (www.sterilizationvictims.nc.gov/documents/preliminary_report.pdf). Figures ranging from $20,000 to $50,00 have been floated as satisfactory lump-sum payments to the victims, but the task force will not settle on a figure until it issues a final report in February 2012. The task force also will consider whether to recommend compensating the surviving family members of sterilization victims who have died. The state should fund a traveling exhibit about North Carolina's experiment with eugenics, said the five-member task force, which includes a pediatrician.

"It may be hard to justify spending millions when the state is cutting back on other essential services," the report said. "But the fact is, there never will be a good time to redress these wrongs, and the victims have already waited too long."

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