Board Disciplines Record Number Of Doctors

I doubt if there is any profession more respected and trusted than medical doctors in our society. We trust them so much that we will usually follow their instructions without question, even though those instructions will very probably seriously impact our health -- either positively or negatively. That's why I was a bit upset at reading this story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

At the August 20-21 meeting of the Texas Medical Board, 131 Texas doctors were disciplined. I thought this sounded like a large number, and sure enough it is a record. The old record was 99 disciplinary actions in August of 2006. Here is a statistical breakdown of the infractions:

40 violations based on quality of care

13 actions based on unprofessional conduct

10 violations for nontherapeutic prescribing

12 violations of inadequate medical records

2 actions for impairment due to alcohol or drugs

2 actions based on peer review actions

2 actions based on failure to properly supervise or delegate

1 advertising violation

5 orders based on criminal convictions

2 actions based on violation of prior order or probation

2 orders modifying a prior order

5 voluntary surrender of medical license

2 recovation of medical licenses

31 orders for minor statutatory violations

I wish I could say these violations covered an entire year, but the way I read the Texas Medical Board report, these are just the violations since the last board meeting on May 28-29 (the board meets 4-6 times a year).

Not all of these infractions involved immediate life-threatening mistakes, but they all were a violation of accepted medical rules, and as such could impact a patient's health. Consider the violation of "inadequate medical records". That sounds innocuous enough. But what if that patient had to go to an emergency room and the ER doctor was not able to access critical information that was left out of the patient's records?

You can click on the above Texas Medical Board report link to see the name and city of each of the disciplined doctors.