Citation

AbuDagga A, Wolfe SM, Carome M, Oshel RE. PLoS One 2016; 11(2): e0147800.

Affiliation

National Practitioner Data Bank (Retired), Department of Health and Human Services, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0147800

PMID

26840639

PMCID

PMC4739584

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Little information exists on U.S. physicians who have been disciplined with licensure or restriction-of-clinical-privileges actions or have had malpractice payments because of sexual misconduct. Our objectives were to: (1) determine the number of these physicians and compare their age groups' distribution with that of the general U.S. physician population; (2) compare the type of disciplinary actions taken against these physicians with actions taken against physicians disciplined for other offenses; (3) compare the characteristics and type of injury among victims of these physicians with those of victims in reports for physicians with other offenses in malpractice-payment reports; and (4) determine the percentages of physicians with clinical-privileges or malpractice-payment reports due to sexual misconduct who were not disciplined by medical boards.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of physician reports submitted to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) from January 1, 2003, through September 30, 2013. A total of 1039 physicians had ≥ 1 sexual-misconduct-related reports. The majority (75.6%) had only licensure reports, and 90.1% were 40 or older. For victims in malpractice-payment reports, 87.4% were female, and "emotional injury only" was the predominant type of injury. We found a higher percentage of serious licensure actions and clinical-privileges revocations in sexual-misconduct-related reports than in reports for other offenses (89.0% vs 68.1%, P = <.001, and 29.3% vs 18.8%, P =.002, respectively). Seventy percent of the physicians with a clinical-privileges or malpractice-payment report due to sexual misconduct were not disciplined by medical boards for this problem.

CONCLUSIONS: A small number of physicians were reported to the NPDB because of sexual misconduct. It is concerning that a majority of the physicians with a clinical-privileges action or malpractice-payment report due to sexual misconduct were not disciplined by medical boards for this unethical behavior.

Language: en