Patient Safety | 09.14.20
Discipline Against Bad Doctors Plummets Amid COVID-19 – and More Medical Errors May Slip Through Cracks
by USA Today
USA Today (09/12/20) Castaneda, Reuben
As hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients and the coronavirus infected physicians and nurses, a number of state medical boards clearly took a hands-off approach to doctor discipline. Emergency actions against doctors' licenses plunged 59% from April through June of this year versus the same three-month period last year. Emergency license suspensions and restrictions dropped 85% in April alone, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, which administers the National Practitioner Data Bank. The Federation of State Medical Boards, which represents the boards of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reports that its data show medical boards' emergency and non-emergency disciplinary actions against physicians were down 14% from January through June. It attributes all of the decline to the pandemic.
Read the full story from USA Today.