Since 1986, state licensing boards, hospitals, professional societies and other health care settings have been working together to identify and discipline medical professionals who act unprofessionally. Federal law permits a national database to be shared among qualifying agencies to help restrict the ability of health care practitioners to move from state to state. This National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) augments traditional forms of credentials review but alerts medical institutions to adverse licensing, membership, malpractice and clinical privilege changes. Yes, dodgy doctors do still exist among us.
The National Practitioner Data Bank also puts out anonymous reports by state of adverse actions performed by types of medical professionals. Here are the top 10 states who have registered some type of problem in licensure, clinical privileges, professional society membership or peer review for licensed Substance abuse counselors from 9/1/90 to 5/22/10:
1. Arizona (409 cases)
2. Colorado (228 cases)
3. Texas (117 cases)
4. Utah (54 cases)
5. Maine (17 cases)
6. Montana (11 cases)
7. Connecticut (7 cases)
8. District of Columbia (5 cases)
9. New Mexico (3 cases)
10.Tennessee (2 cases)
All of this data lends the question, “What’s going on in the southwest???” Anyone have any insight here? Is this simply because these states are complying with reporting regulations? Or are the professional substance abuse counselors in AZ, CO, TX and UT simply more likely to be caught doing something wrong? Or are counselors in these states actually not practicing according to licensing requirements? Is the west still wild? Comments welcome!
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