High-Tech Medical Disclosures
Often, the backgrounds of those who work on our auto bodies seem easier to come by than the backgrounds of the doctors who work on our own bodies. Possessing only the flimsy brochures provided by our health insurance companies, many of us consider ourselves lucky if we manage to track down the name of the medical school our doctor attended.
Californians in fact have access to a broader range of information than most realize. Since 1993, the state Medical Board has made available information on malpractice awards in excess of $30,000 and physicians’ felony convictions. Anyone can receive the documents by calling the board at (916) 263-2382.
Last week there was a development in Massachusetts that may accelerate a nationwide movement to give consumers an even broader range of such information. The Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill giving consumers access to information on all malpractice awards, disciplinary actions, lawsuit settlements and felony or serious misdemeanor convictions against doctors in that state.
As David B. Nash, director of health policy research at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, put it, “This is going to be an inexorable trend across the country.”
It’s not surprising that doctors groups are up in arms. But their upset doesn’t center on the notion that the Massachusetts legislation, which the governor is expected to sign, would publicize information they consider private. What concerns them most is that Massachusetts plans to make information once obtainable only by rifling through reams of government files instantly accessible on the Internet.
Following Massachusetts’ lead, the Medical Board of California, an oversight agency composed of doctors and patients, plans to post its own home page on the Internet sometime next year. But when it does so, we hope that unlike Massachusetts it will bring important context to the information it provides.
The Medical Board will need to emphasize a fact confirmed in 1991 by separate studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. and the New England Journal of Medicine: that innocent physicians often settle lawsuits for $5,000 in order to avoid spending the more than $50,000 that a court trial would require.
There’s no question that the experiment begun in Massachusetts promises to give patients essential information that their tight-lipped insurance companies have been unwilling to provide. But the legitimate need of patients to know ought to be weighed against the need for fairness for physicians who are already feeling increasingly second-guessed by insurance adjusters and managed-care administrators.
