Report: Medical boards overlook doctors’ sexual misconduct

by Marie McCullough

Published Feb. 3, 2016, 2:11 p.m. ET

State medical boards are supposed to stop dangerous doctors from practicing, but these regulatory bodies are failing to take action against many doctors who committed some form of sexual misconduct against their patients, according to a new study by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

The study is the first ever published to analyze information on physician sexual misconduct from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a confidential, federally mandated database that receives reports of disciplinary actions taken by state medical boards, hospitals, and health care organizations. The NPDB also receives reports of malpractice payments made on behalf of physicians by insurance companies.

Public Citizen for years has pushed state medical boards to do a better job of disciplining problem doctors. The report comes a day after the Inquirer reported on discredited abortion doctor Steven Brigham's latest encounter with the New Jersey Board of Medicine.

The study published today in PLOS ONE found that a small number – 1,039 -- of the nation's 850,085 physicians had sexual misconduct-related reports to the NPDB between Jan. 1, 2003, and Sept. 30, 2013. Sexual misconduct may be verbal or physical, or both, and range from propositioning a patient to sexual assault. Of physicians with such reports, 786 physicians (76 percent) were disciplined only by a medical board.

The remaining 253 physicians who had engaged in sexual misconduct had reports of clinical privilege restrictions by hospitals or malpractice payments by insurers. However, most of these doctors -- 177 – were not disciplined for their misbehavior by state medical boards.

"It's clear that medical boards are allowing some doctors with evidence of sexual misconduct to continue endangering patients and staff," said Azza AbuDagga, health services researcher for Public Citizen's health research group and lead author of the study. "These boards must pay more attention to sexual misconduct that leads to health care organizations cracking down or to lawsuits."

One encouraging finding from the study: When state medical boards do act on sexual misconduct, the disciplinary sanction usually severe. The boards revoked, suspended, or restricted the medical licenses of 866 (89 percent) of the 974 physicians they punished. In contrast, medical boards took such severe action in about two-thirds of cases involving other types of misconduct such as substance abuse or falsifying records.

"These numbers show that when state medical boards take action, the action rightly tends to be much more severe for physicians who engaged in sexual misconduct than other offenses," said Sidney Wolfe, founder and senior advisor of Public Citizen's health research group. "Now, the medical boards need to pay increased attention to sexual misconduct that led to health care organizations cracking down or to lawsuits. State medical boards have full access to the NPDB data. The boards must protect the public."