Colorado Rated Well on Physician Oversight

According to the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, Colorado ranked in the top five states to have the strongest rate of disciplinary action against physicians who pose risk to patients. The states of Michigan, Ohio, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia also were in the top five. The report used data from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a flagging system that cannot be accessed by the general public. A former associate director of research at NPBD said there’s no evidence that physicians in any state are, overall, more or less likely to make mistakes than physicians in other states, but the difference is how well a state does take disciplinary action when it’s called for. “In other words,” the Health Research Group said, “states with higher doctor discipline rates are doing a better job of protecting patients.” Nationally, of roughly 16,000 physicians reported to the NPDB, just half had any action taken against them. The report urged state medical boards to use NPDB data when licensing physicians or renewing licenses and also called for physician-specific data to be available to the public to foster greater transparency. The general public can check out physician credentials and reputations to a degree at sites like https://www.healthgrades.com/ and https://www.vitals.com/.