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Protecting Patients From Physicians Who Inflict Harm: New Legal Resources For State Medical Boards, Elizabeth Pendo, Tristan Mcintosh, Heidi Walsh, Kari Baldwin, James M. Dubois
Protecting Patients From Physicians Who Inflict Harm: New Legal Resources For State Medical Boards, Elizabeth Pendo, Tristan Mcintosh, Heidi Walsh, Kari Baldwin, James M. Dubois
All Faculty Scholarship
State medical boards (SMBs) protect the public by ensuring that physicians uphold appropriate standards of care and ethical practice. Despite this clear purpose, egregious types of wrongdoing by physicians are alarmingly frequent, harmful, and under-reported. Even when egregious wrongdoing is reported to SMBs, it is unclear why SMBs sometimes fail to promptly remove seriously offending physicians from practice. Legal and policy tools that are targeted, well-informed, and actionable are urgently needed to help SMBs more effectively protect patients from egregious wrongdoing by physicians.
Past reviews of SMB performance have identified features of SMBs associated with higher rates of severe disciplinary …