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Barriers To Medical Board Discipline: Cultural And Organizational Constraints, Elizabeth Chiarello

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Medical boards are responsible for disciplining physicians who inflict egregious harm on their patients, yet they often fail to do so. This Article develops a cultural and organizational framework for explaining why boards so often fail to discipline physicians. The framework highlights three types of barriers that impede board action: (1) input barriers that prevent hospitals and clinics from reporting harm to boards, (2) processing barriers that prevent boards from taking sufficient action against physicians who do harm, and (3) output barriers that prevent boards from sharing information about physicians who do harm with other disciplinary agencies like other medical …