Both Indiana and Illinois have a state medical board that is entrusted with overseeing doctors and physicians for quality of service and provided care. They are creations of state law with the power to test applicants and license physicians to practice medicine in their state.
These state medical boards also have the power to discipline doctors who have caused serious or deadly harm to their patients either through negligence, incompetence, or other forms of medical malpractice. These are internal disciplinary proceedings that are independent of any civil medical malpractice action that may be brought for damages in state court, or from any criminal charges brought by law enforcement.
Last month, the nonprofit consumer advocates at Public Citizen published a new report that ranks the country’s state medical boards on their ability to oversee the quality of medical care provided in their jurisdiction, particularly how effective each medical board was at taking action against physicians who have caused harm to patients through malpractice or other bad acts.
- Read: “Ranking of the Rate of State Medical Boards’ Serious Disciplinary Actions 2017 -2019,” published by Public Citizen on March 31, 2021 (Report).
From the Report, page 4:
The purpose of this report is to examine the extent to which medical licensing boards are taking action is to protect the public from licensed physicians who injure patients or behave inappropriately or illegally. Since, to date, no objective standards have been developed to measure board performance in the abstract, we compare the performance of the state medical boards based on the annual average number of serious disciplinary actions taken by the boards per 1,000 licensees.
Illinois Fares Much Better Than Indiana in Public Citizen Report
According to Public Citizen’s findings, Illinois ranked tenth (10th) in the country as having the most serious disciplinary actions and Indiana ranked fortieth (40th). Report, Table 1, page 9. The higher the rank, the more policing has been done by the state medical board in this study. The State of Kentucky leads the country by far with 7.9 times more disciplinary actions undertaken than the lowest ranked jurisdiction, the District of Columbia.
Taking into consideration the different number of physicians licensed in the different states, Public Citizen calculated the number of disciplinary actions each state would have to undertake during a calendar year to equal the oversight accomplished by the State of Kentucky.
According to their calculations, Illinois would have to have a 51.6% increase in disciplinary actions and Indiana a shocking 283.1% increase in oversight before their medical boards would be performing at the standards currently reached by Kentucky’s medical board. Report, Table 2, page 10.
“The public deserves to be protected from dangerous doctors. There is no evidence that physicians in any state are, overall, more or less likely to be incompetent or miscreant than the physicians in any other state. Thus, differences in discipline rates between states reflect variations in boards’ enforcement of medical practice laws, domination of licensing boards by physicians, and inadequate budgets rather than differences in physician incompetence.”
2021 CBS News Exposé of State Medical Boards Focuses on Indiana
The Public Citizen report comes within ninety days of CBS News’ report on its year-long investigation into the effectiveness of our country’s state medical boards on protecting people from bad doctors who harm patients. As part of this exposé, CBS News reporter Jim Axelrod came to the Hoosier State to study physician oversight in the State of Indiana.
See “CBS News Finds Medical Boards Often Fail to Discipline Doctors for Malpractice,” published on January 4, 2021.
Of particular interest to Hoosiers may be the part of this exposé entitled “An inherent conflict of interest”: State medical boards often fail to discipline doctors who hurt their patients,” which details the experience of two patients treated by the same doctor at the same Indianapolis hospital.
The report confirms that the surgeon in question had negotiated settlements of five different malpractice lawsuits over a ten-year period, which breaks down to a new malpractice suit every two years. Nevertheless, his actions never resulted in any kind of discipline in the form of either suspension or medical license revocation from the Indiana Medical Board.
Medical Malpractice Claims in Indiana and Illinois as Disciplinary Vehicle
Obviously, the CBS News investigation and the Public Citizen research both confirm that patients and their loved ones in Indiana, Illinois, and the rest of the country cannot rely upon state medical boards to keep dangerous doctors from harming patients and committing medical negligence. These boards are not doing enough to prevent physicians from committing malpractice.
CBS News and Public Citizen’s work also reinforces the position of victims’ advocates who represent those who have been hurt or killed by the bad acts or incompetence of the physician entrusted with their care.
These victims and their loved ones must look to the civil avenues for justice found in state negligence and medical malpractice laws of Indiana and Illinois in the aftermath of serious harm caused by a physician or hospital in Indiana or Illinois.
Not only do these claims and lawsuits offer hope in the form of damage compensation (covering medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and more) but they can also serve as a warning against future malpractice by the practitioner as well as the hospitals and other providers in that locality.
For more on medical malpractice, read:
- Medical Malpractice in Illinois and Indiana: Botched Surgeries, Nursing Home Neglect, and More
- Military Medical Malpractice Claims in Illinois or Indiana
- Medical Malpractice: Injury or Death from Medical Devices
- Medical Errors Killing Patients: How Serious is the Risk of Death from Medication Mistake in Illinois or Indiana?
- Fatal Medical Errors: Medical Mistakes Leading Cause of Death in the United States
If you or a loved one have suffered because of the mistake or failure in duty of care by a health care provider in Indiana or Illinois, then you may have a claim for medical malpractice against the health care provider(s). Please be careful out there!
