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Study: Criminal violations often go unpunished

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, October 4, 2006

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A study, published by Case Western Reserve University of Law's publication Health Matrix, has found that physicians disciplined by state and federal agencies during the 1990's for conduct involving criminal activity often received minimal punishment, and many are still practicing today.

According to a report from Public Citizen's Health Research Group (www.citizen.org), the authors of the report found that more than 2,000 physicians disciplined for criminal conduct between the years 1990-1999 were later hired by the federal government, specifically to serve as physicians in federal prisons.

The most common forms of criminal behavior were insurance fraud and prescribing violations (29% each). The database, created for the study took into account all state disciplinary agencies and several federal agencies (the Medicare program, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration), included 31,110 disciplinary cases against 20,125 physicians.

"Data from this study clearly shows that the current system allows questionable doctors to continue practicing medicine even after they have behaved in illegal, incompetent or hazardous ways," said Paul Jung, MD, senior lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park, and co-author of the report.

A copy of the article is available at http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7454.

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