Finding Out about Doctors

Finding the Dirt about Doctors

Oregon medical board, www.oregon.gov/OMB, has put on their website every official act that they have levied against a doctor, the ones that have reached to a conclusion, but not the unwarranted accusations. At least the last 20 years is full text on line but for older orders, you may have to call the office to request the results and pay $10-$20 for each order. The website does have the status of their certification, but appears to not list their office address or phone any longer. It also lists Medical School and Residency graduation and dates.
A doctor’s standing will be listed on the OMB such as: Provisional ..or.. Good standing. Measures against a doctor can be a range-- from severe accidents to dull ones like a failure to send a chart in a timely manner, due administrative errors etc. And some things don’t even make it onto the OMB site. Some things that have nothing to do with malpractice yet if they have a judgment against them, for example a judgement from court that they have a substance abuse problem then that will be fully online. There is a link to recent (within the last 4 years) malpractice rulings (final judgments). If there are older cases, you would have to request a list from the Board and pay a fee (around $10-20).

State Medical Examiners--other states not Oregonhttp://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-physician/medical-licensure/state-medical-boards.shtml is the link to the AMA list of state boards of Medical Examiners. Or, if long websites are hard to remember then Google -State boards of Medical Examiners. You will find this site, plus individual state sites. It appears that most states now have a fairly robust list of licensees. Two previous states where a known doctor held licenses back in the 70’s still lists his name, but not as an active physician. (Remember that physicians can be listed under M for Medical doctor or P for Physician and Surgeon.) Different states will include different specialties, such as acupuncturist, physician assistants, etc, and most states have a separate nursing board.

ABMS website http://www.certificationmatters.org/ is the website for ABMS searching as of Feb 2011 with a nice interface, in which search must be initiated, and then you are prompted to log in. It's free to register. Even without a subscription to the print volumes, ABMS.org will tell you which board-certification that person is certified with.
However some information lags ex: if they just got it in the last 6 months, if they moved, it might not be correct. Other examples: One known specialist isn’t even listed in ABMS yet he is board certified in addiction medicine. It is legal for a doctor to merely say that he specializes in xxx (anything within the realm of medicine and/or surgery). The question to ask is really, is he board-certified in that specialty.

The AMA-ASSN site. http://www.ama-assn.org/ Vast but sketchy - It has a “find a doctor” button. It lists physicians who are not always members of the AMA too. But it’s self-reported. So if someone responds that they are a surgeon then.. okay maybe they merely say they are but it’s not 100% a convincer that they are certified as a surgeon. What if a doctor’s profile is not in there? Maybe he’s not a member. Perhaps it’s not showing much for nonmembers.

Paying dot com sites (i.e., healthgrades.com)
Sites that make you pay $10 for this info has been incorrect there too. A known doctor did a search in it and reported back that it was not correct (the address was 8 years old). For fee sites do not generally provide more than the info on free sites.

What people really want
The depth of information that is available at the National Practitioner Data site is what people really want, but it is not often available to the general public. It’s only available to state boards of medical examiners who are trying to judge whether they are able to be licensed in a new state, administrators of hospitals who have paid a big fee, government agencies like the DEA, etc.


The Call and Confirm methodYou should be able to contact a doctor and ask them what state their license is in, what their specialty certification is and when, what their interest is (what are the last 2 conferences that the doctor attended). Then you can go to that board or the ABMS and confirm it. If you can’t confirm it it’s either really new or maybe something is actually fishy.