You know an issue is important when a variety of people have something to say about it.
It seems that our hospital report from late May has had this sort of effect. The report outlines our findings: Since 1990, when the National Practitioner Data Bank went online, hospitals have reported, on average, just 650 doctors a year that have been disciplined for unprofessional behavior or incompetence. That falls well short of the 5,000 annual reports anticipated when the database was created. Nearly 50 percent of all hospitals did not submit a single name to the database in its first 17 years.
Appalled at this apparent dismissal of the databank by hospitals around the country, we offered some powerful recommendations to fix the system, including more vigorous legislative oversight, substantial fines for hospitals that fail to report doctors and making compliance with the database requirements part of the Medicare certification process.