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New law lets patients find out more about doctors

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 2, 2009 at 12:29 p.m.
Updated January 2, 2009 at 12:29 p.m.

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Coloradans in 2009 can learn much more about the doctor who is about to perform a delicate procedure on them, thanks to a law that demands more transparency.

House Bill 1331, also known as the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act, requires doctors registering in Colorado to include any public disciplinary action taken against them.

That means that if a neurosurgeon, say, lost hospital privileges in a medical center because of botching a brain surgery, that information will be available to Colorado consumers as soon as that doctor registers or re-registers in this state.

So far, some 1,300 doctors newly registered in Colorado have that information on line.

Come this May, another 2,000 doctors will have to provide that information -- that's the month when a big batch of re-registrations for current Colorado doctors are due.

Here is how it works:

Consumers can go to www.dora.state.co.us, and on the home page find "Popular Pages," then click on the first item, "Physician Profile Web Outlook."

There, doctors can be looked up by license number, name, board certification, city or speciality area.

If back surgery is in the offing, clicking on that specialty area will turn up Dr. Melissa Koenig, who was one of the first affected by the new law when she moved to Colorado in June from Maryland.

Under her profile, the consumer will discover:

-- She has never had public disciplinary action taken against her by any licensing agency or board in any state or in the nation.

-- She's never had her medical license restricted or suspended.

-- She's never had her rights to practice in a hospital suspended, limited or reduced. Sometimes a doctor who has had trouble can continue to, say, dispense drugs, but only under the supervision of another doctor. The Colorado law now uncovers such arrangements.

-- She has an active license to practice medicine in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Washington, D.C., but she has allowed her Texas license to expire.

-- She didn't yet -- as of June -- have an affiliation with an Colorado hospital, but has affiliations in Maryland and D.C.

-- She doesn't own a business offering health-care services and isn't an employee of such a business. Consumers like to know whether a doctor pushing certain medications or treatments has a monetary stake in them.

-- She's never had to involuntarily surrender her US Drug Enforcement Agency registration, which grants her the right to order medications for patients.

-- She's never been convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude.

-- She's never had a medical malpractice carrier refuse to issue her insurance due to past claims.

-- She's never paid a final claim against her based on a malpractice lawsuit.

This last was a sticking point when lawmakers and doctors were debating the bill, which was introduced by State Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Denver, and State Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton.

It's not uncommon for doctors to be sued for malpractice, sometimes frivolously, so the Colorado Medical Society lobbied against making public the mere presence of a lawsuit.

The compromise was that final judgments would be made public.

Dr. Koenig's profile shows a clean slate, so patients looking at it should have extra assurance that they're in good hands.

"We have a great deal of confidence in the system," said Chris Lines, spokesman for DORA. "We see it as a consumer protection that anyone in the state can use."

It's hard to say how many doctors have been dissuaded from registering in Colorado because they have marks against their records.

But Lines expects those numbers will be very small.

The law arose from the grief of the parents of Michael Skolnik, who died in 2004, three years after a neurosurgeon performed what Patty and David Skolnik think was unnecessary surgery.

Patty Skolnik says that if she had known that the doctor had had a malpractice claim and settlement in Georgia, she likely would have vetoed the surgery.

Michael was 22 in 2001, studying to be a pediatric nurse, when he blacked out one day, Patty recalled.

She said a series of mistakes led to her son getting unneccesary surgery from an inexperienced doctor who jostled his brain.

She said a few months later doctors at Craig Hospital told her Michael was half-blind, partly paralyzed, psychotic and had the reasoning ability of a third-grader.

She described the next 24 months as "two years of hell," in which medical bills totaled $4.8 million.

She said Michael couldn't walk or talk, but almost daily mimed pointing a gun at his head, indicating he didn't want to live.

On June 4 of 2004, Michael mouthed the words, "I love you," to his father, David, and died.

Colleague's of Michael's surgeon, Dr. David Wayne Miller, say he is an excellent doctor -- "The finest neurosurgeon I ever worked with," said one doctor at Miller's Glenwood Springs practice.

Miller himself told the Grand Junction Sentinel last year, "I did my best to help her son. If she doesn't think I wake up every day thinking about Michael Skolnik, she's mistaken."

He says neurosurgery is delicate and complex and that people die from it even in the absence of mistakes.

Lawmakers know that a single mistake, a single malpractice settlement, shouldn't define a doctor's life's work.

But they agreed with Skolnik that consumers should at least have that information so they can make a better informed decision about upcoming surgery, for example.

That decision certainly could include sitting down with the doctor and asking him or her about the circumstances of the previous lawsuit and deciding together whether to proceed with surgery.

Comments

  • January 2, 2009

    2:04 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    What's the point of discipline if it's not made public. We get so little for tax dollars spent.

  • January 2, 2009

    2:48 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    INC writes:

    Now doctor fees will go up 150%...

    aside from that good law!

  • January 2, 2009

    3:12 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nimbusco writes:

    I've never had a traffic ticket. However, I think that people who have ever had a speeding ticket or any other moving violation should be required to get special license plates. We already use green on most plates here, so let's have green plates for people without a ticket, yellow plates for people with 1, and red plates for people with more than 1 ticket. Ever. No expiration date, so that ticket you got at age 16 will still follow you until you are 60. Or, maybe we can base the scheme on how many points drivers have against their licenses. However, since many tickets are pleaded down to reduce points, I don't think that's such a good idea. If everyone is required to display these color-coded plates, we all know whom to avoid when driving, and we know whom to suspect when there is an accident. That would probably save more lives than this new law regarding disciplinary records of doctors.

  • January 2, 2009

    3:48 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    BigRich writes:

    This law doesn't go nearly far enough. My experience tells me that the Colorado Medical Board works very hard to protect doctors and medical practices. They will find new ways to avoid reporting in all but the most blatant cases. I feel for the Skolniks, but I don't believe that this law will make much difference in a system which is very heavily weighted against patients.

    Did you know that patients who are harmed by Colorado doctors are virtually locked out of the courts on malpractice claims unless they can prove actual damages of $1 million or more? Unless the patient can afford to finance a malpractice case on his own ($50k or more out of pocket), he can have actual damages of $600,000 or $900,000 and he'll never find an attorney to take the case.

    I know that frivolous malpractice claims have driven the cost of medicine way up, but under the current Colorado system, many patients have no way to recoup their actual substantial losses.

  • January 2, 2009

    3:57 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    bone writes:

    I CAN'T TEXT, TALK, EAT AND CHECK THE COLOR OF EVERYONE'S LISCENSE PLATE! JEEZ

  • January 2, 2009

    4:21 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    44roger writes:

    Bone, just what I was thinking,another distraction from driving, the writer should run for office, that's how politicians think. more red vehicles get stopped by the police than any other color, so avoid the red ones.

  • January 2, 2009

    4:51 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nimbusco writes:

    Actually, my point was that the law can require all sorts of things that make you feel safer that, in actuality, do not make you significantly safer than you were before. I suspect that this law is one of those things.

  • January 2, 2009

    6:14 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    This law could put the brakes on malpractice by running the bad guys out of the state. What could be wrong with that?

  • January 2, 2009

    7:45 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    patientsrighttoknow writes:

    This is a first step in helping consumers have a concrete discussion with their medical professionals. We must participate in our own health care.... that starts by doing some due diligence regarding our providers. The majority of doctors have no issue with an empowered patient and in fact welcomes them... it enables the patient and provider to partner.

  • January 3, 2009

    6:49 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    WoodsideParkBob writes:

    Concerning the sentence in the story: "The compromise was that final judgments would be made public." -- Data from the National Practitioner Data Bank, which receives reports of all malpractice payments, shows that 97 percent of malpractice payments are made through settlements, not court judgments. If this law really requires only final court judgments to be reported, it is missing 97 percent of all malpractice payments and could give a false impression about a physician's record.

    It is also troubling that the law seems to call for self-reporting by physicians. Experience in other states has shown that physicians often fail to report negative information about themselves.

  • January 3, 2009

    6:56 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    matadco writes:

    nimbusco, your idea about colored license plates for traffic tickets is stupid and your further explanation shows your lack of intelligence. What you obviously don't know is your auto insurer already has information from the state about your driving record and you pay higher insurance for those tickets/mistakes. If it is good enough for drivers, surely it should apply to doctors' mistakes that can kill you very easy. There is just no room for mistakes in the medical.

  • January 3, 2009

    9:17 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    jersey writes:

    Maybe it's just me but I would think common sense would be in place rather than needing a special law.