Ohio’s state medical board ranks third in the nation in the rate of disciplinary actions it took against doctors, according to an annual report from a left-leaning watchdog group.
The State Medical Board of Ohio took an annual average of 5.36 serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 doctors between 2008 and 2010, according to an analysis from consumer group Public Citizen. Ohio took 210 serious disciplinary actions against physicians last year.
At 1.29 actions per 1,000 doctors, Minnesota ranked the worst out of all 50 states in disciplining doctors. Louisiana came in at No. 1. North Carolina scored a dramatic improvement, moving up to 16th from 41st.
The report defines serious disciplinary actions as revocations, surrenders, suspensions, probation and restrictions.
The national rate was 2.97 disciplinary actions per 1,000 doctors, which is down 20 percent from the nationwide peak in 2004, according to Public Citizen.
The study’s author, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said the numbers show that states need to step up their protection of patients.
“There is, unfortunately, considerable evidence that most boards are inadequately disciplining physicians,” he said in a statement. Some of that can likely be attributed to state budget cuts that have taken a toll on state boards’ abilities to enforce discipline on doctors, according to the report.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Ohio medical board’s executive director, Richard Whitehouse, told the Dayton Daily News that the ranking is a key measure, though it doesn’t account for other areas in which he feels Ohio’s medical board is a leader, including rehabilitation and remediation of doctors.
In the past, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has clashed with the medical board over his perception that the board wasn’t pursuing doctors aggressively enough for unscrupulous behavior, and more specifically, behavior that relates to prescription drug abuse. Kasich complained earlier this year that the board was too slow to suspend the license of a Portsmouth pain clinic doctor, though it did so eventually.
“This guy is still practicing medicine,” Kasich said before the board suspended the doctor’s license, the Portsmouth Daily Times reported. “Suspend the guy for probable cause. Either we’re serious about this or we’re not.”
At Kasich’s urging, the medical board has moved combating inappropriate prescribing by doctors who run so-called “pill mills” to the top of its agenda.
