Voluntary Agreement Not To Practice (Non-Disciplinary)

Medical fault lawyer Andrew Meyer is often the only recourse for patients against dangerous doctors. / Photo by Jonathan Kozowyk (5) A description of how to change the terms of the agreement; And when Antonio woke up slowly and a halo stabilizer was glued to his skull, he and his wife filed a medical malpractice complaint against Medlock, who meanwhile denied the charges. Then, last year, Antonio wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, which is tasked with monitoring physicians and protecting patients from poor quality care. According to a letter Antonio received from the House, an official investigation had begun. Today, more than a year later, the College of Physicians has no finding on the charges against Medlock, who remains a licensed neurosurgeon, who can practice anywhere in the state. There is no practical or simple way for the public to learn all this, including his operation in Antonio. Dr. Steven L. Shafer, the Anesthesia-Analgesia, a medical journal that printed out some of Ruben`s studies – and which was later withdrawn – said he could not support «lack of disclosure» in the Massachusetts profile database and said Ruben should never practice medicine again.

What complicates matters further for patients is that the tools available for physician history research are incomplete, poorly postulated and designed with privacy in mind, not transparency. If you are like most health consumers in Massachusetts, you are probably not aware that every licensed physician in the state has a doctor profile on the board`s website. But don`t worry, you don`t miss much. Profiles are supposed to list all cases of maladministration and disciplinary action, but often they do not. Of course, it is the patients who ultimately bear the cost of hospital secrets. Take the case of Peter Black, the chief medical officer of Brigham and Women`s and Boston Children`s Hospitals in the early 2000s. In 2008, Brigham and Women limited the types of procedures he could conduct and considered an important disciplinary action that requires a report to the College of Physicians. But BWH structured the restriction as a voluntary decision by Schwarz (despite the fact that, as Schwarz later testified in an unrelated federal action, he accepted it under duress). This voluntary agreement relieved the BWH of its obligation to notify the Council of Physicians of its disciplinary measures and to make the information public. (Brigham and Women`s stated that they would not be able to publish details of Black`s previous employment, adding that «patient safety is our first priority and we take seriously our obligation to inform the Board of Medicine of any disciplinary action subject to reporting.» (a) health admissions agencies referred to (c) invite their licensees to make available to boards of directors their expected retirement dates, age, gender, percentage of direct working time, percentage of time administration and county practice, to facilitate planning for future staffing needs of health professionals. And when it comes to recent payments for faults, more than a quarter of the 2,467 payments made over the past decade no longer appear on the profiles of the doctors responsible for the fault.

Similarly, most of these doctors have abandoned their practices or left the state like Ames-Castro, and their profiles have been removed, Aims said. Riley said there is no loss of transparency, because the board of directors is subjecting disciplinary and reprehensible files after 10 years, and removing the profiles of former licensed doctors – although few other states do the same.