Bad Doctors Not Reported

Reuters Health reports that in a June 6, 2001 letter to US Attorney John Ashcroft, consumer advocate Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, asked the Justice Department to make good on a 4-year-old promise to provide information on nearly 2600 doctors who have voluntarily given up their federal narcotic prescribing licenses.

The Justice Department was to have kept information on the doctors in the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) after their license had been surrendered. It is the responsibility of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to turn over the names to the data bank. The doctors involved either violated the federal Controlled Substances Act or engaged in other unacceptable medical practices.

The NPDB is not accessible to the public. Hospitals, medical societies and managed care organizations are, however, required to check a doctor's background using the data bank in order to admit or credential them for practice.

According to Wolfe, organizations that "rely on it for accurate information for 2,592 doctors who have done things serious enough to have their license surrendered, there will be a blank page in the NPDB."