Regulating with Blinders: Illinois Revives Physician Database, But Not Key Oversight Tool
Persistence pays.
Nearly a decade ago, Illinois State Rep. Mary Flowers authored a bill making it easier for people in Illinois to learn about their doctors' board certification status, disciplinary histories, and malpractice cases.
Several attempts to pass the bill failed, as Flowers ran up against the well-funded physicians' lobby. To get her bill through, Flowers had to compromise and attach her law to a cap on malpractice payments. The law passed, and, in 2008, the state created a detailed Physician Profile database, with records on nearly 50,000 medical doctors and other health professionals.
But the malpractice cap was struck down by the state Supreme Court, taking the "Patient Right to Know" Act with it.
Shortly thereafter, the state took the physician database down, too.
As Antidote wrote last year, this means that there is no record on the state's site about the $12 million court judgment against Dr. Steven Armbrust, a family practice doctor in Wheaton, Ill. found to have been responsible in delaying a C-section and causing severe brain damage to a newborn, according to court documents. There is no record of the $1.2 million judgment against Dr. Alexander C. Miller, after a surgery he performed left a woman with permanent nerve damage. An appeals court upheld the verdict, but, unless patients know how to navigate court records, they would never know that.
Last year, Antidote asked for answers about the database from the Illinois Division of Professional Regulation. Spokeswoman Susan Hofer told Antidote that the department was working with Flowers to revive the act and thereby revive the database.
Flowers told Antidote that she intended to fight for the act once again because patients, unlike physicians, don't have a strong voice in the statehouse.
"Sick people cannot fight, and dead people cannot talk," she said. "I guarantee you it has not gone away. To make a long story short, it is ready to go, and I am going to try to call it during our veto session in November."
And, although it took a little longer than she had anticipated, she made good on her word.
Her bill passed in May and was signed by Gov. Pat Quinn last week. Carla Johnson at the Associated Press wrote:
Consumers will be able to see whether a doctor has been disciplined in Illinois or in another state. Malpractice judgments and settlements going back five years will be posted, as will updates as new cases are decided. If a doctor appeals a court judgment, the doctor's profile will note the appeal. Brent Adams, head of the Illinois agency running the doctor database, said the tool was "extremely popular" and drew more than 150,000 hits each week. ‘It is clear that Illinoisans crave this information and they should,' said Adams, secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. The tool will be posted on the agency's website.
There's one catch, though. When the Supreme Court struck down the malpractice cap, it also took away one of the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's best tools for doctor discipline. Because of the law that was part of the cap, the agency was able to look through a 10-year period of a doctor's records to find a "pattern of practice." Without that law, the state is limited to five years.
"If you only perform a surgery once a year but you always have a bad outcome, that pattern might not show up in just five years," Hofer said. "Over 10 years, we are able to see these patterns even if the surgeries are done infrequently."
Limiting investigators to a specific time frame seems odd on its face. Legislators, and the courts, have essentially put blinders on state regulators. Would you tell police officers they could only look in a five-mile radius for a murder weapon? But 10 years is at least better than five years. The surgery in the Dr. Andrew C. Miller case cited above, for example, happened in 2002 and would be off-limits for the agency. It would be fair game under the pattern of practice law, at least for the next few months.
Antidote contacted Hofer again this week who said that, as far as she knows, there is no effort to revive the pattern of practice law.
Related Posts:
Chicago's Buried Bodies, Part 1: Illinois regulators make backgrounding doctors near-impossible
Chicago's Buried Bodies, Part 2: Millions in malpractice judgments amount to nothing in Illinois
Chicago's Buried Bodies, Part 3: The doctor discipline ball bounces to the legislative court
Q&A with Mary Flowers, Part 1: Bringing medical mistakes out of the shadows
Q&A with Mary Flowers, Part 2: Adding "sorry" to the medical lexicon
Doctors Behaving Badly: Chicago doc accused in baby's death gets by with a little help from the Klan
Q&A with Jeanne Bouillon: Turning anger into action, changing state law on doctor discipline
Q&A with Jeanne Bouillon Part 2: Removing the veil from medical malpractice histories