Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Virginia Knights of Columbus Go Wobbly on Abortion
The Knights of Columbus have been Catholic stalwarts in the Culture Wars. Anybody who has witnessed the annual March for Life in Washington DC will remember their fluttering banners at the head of columns of solemn Knights where charter buses disgorged the faithful. Well, that was then, and this is now. Even the Pope appears to have wearied of the anti-abortion struggle. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/knights-of-columbus-council-decides-to-honor-virginias-pro-abortion-governo
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Texas Abortionist Keeps Ambulances Busy
This article by anti-abortion activist Cheryl Sullenger reports that one abortion clinic in Houston has called the ambulance four times in the past month. The public policy implications are fairly obvious here, but four ambulances in a month should also attract the attention of Personal Injury attorneys. A Planned Parenthood franchise is not a fly-by-night business, despite the apparent defects of this one. It is almost certainly fully covered by professional liability insurance.
Safety Hazard: Houston Planned Parenthood Sends Four Patients to the ER in Less Than 30 Days
March 3, 2015 By 2 Comments
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Whatever Happened to the Stem Cell Connection to Autism?
Vaccines made with fetal cells causing autism?
An EPA study published February 2010 in Environmental Science & Technology found that a marked increase in the incidence of autism began in 1988.
"Although the debate about the nature of increasing autism continues, the potential for this increase to be real and involve exogenous environmental stressors exists."
According to that month's Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute Newsletter, (1988) was the year that the 2nd dose of the MMR vaccine was added to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices vaccine recommendations.
SCPI found 3 "change points" in autism trends - 1981, 1988, and 1995.
The conventional wisdom, that the mercury in vaccines caused autism, has been well debunked.
Vaccines that can be associated with the autism trend change points never contained mercury, and some animal-produced vaccines used universally in the US before 1979 contained levels of mercury as high, if not higher, than current levels.
In light of the EPA's findings, American Life League joined SCPI in calling for a Fair Labeling and Informed Consent Act.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the same ideological culprits who have dismissed and suppressed the abortion-breast cancer link are also involved here.
Right to Life of Michigan posted two easy-to-read charts listing vaccines made with aborted fetal stem cell lines, and their moral and potentially safer alternatives.
That virus-laden DNA of aborted babies could be wreaking havoc on the DNA of healthy children is completely plausible.
911 Call for Ambulance is Not Uncommon
Safe and Legal?
Abortion practice typically does not attract the cream of the medical profession. It's rare to see young physicians, fresh from med school and still ambitious, in this line of work. More often a doctor comes to abortion at mid-career after a disappointing start. Inevitably, there are calls to the EMS system to evacuate victims from their premises. Here is a recent 911 call from a Florida clinic. http://myemail.constantcontact.com/911-Call-from-Florida-Abortion-Clinic---We-Can-t-Stop-the-Bleeding-.html?soid=1000844617017&aid=P9ZuZi_kVTs
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Abortion Industry Assesses Legislative Landscape After Midtern Elections
This web news site represents the abortion industry, which apparently fears that the 2011 midtern elections could be game-changing.
Anti-Abortion State Legislators Rise in Power
by Sharon Johnson
WeNews senior correspondent
State legislatures look poised for what pro-choice activists grimly call a banner year in bills to limit abortion rights.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Pro-choice advocates are bracing for a tough year in state lawmaking.
"Thanks to the gains by conservatives in the Nov. 6 election, 2011 will be a banner year for anti-choice legislation in the states," predicted Donna Crane, policy director of the Washington-based NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political watchdog of the pro-choice movement for more than 30 years.
Only 34 of the more than 600 anti-abortion bills proposed by state lawmakers in 2010 were approved last year. But that number is set to soar, says Crane, because 15 states now have anti-choice legislatures and governors versus 10 in 2010--and anti-choice politicians made gains throughout the country.
"Other states have experienced significant increases in the number of conservatives who are in key positions in legislatures where they can roll back pro-choice laws that have been on the books for 30 years," she said.
The implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the landmark health care overhaul that President Obama signed in March--became a battleground for abortion financing last year and has intensified the desire of anti-choice legislators to introduce bills that will make it more difficult for women to finance the procedure at the state level.
By mid-July, when most state legislatures had adjourned for the year, five states had already passed laws prohibiting abortion coverage in the health insurance plans offered by the new state exchanges, which will begin operating in 2014.
"A deluge of similar bills will be introduced when legislatures reconvene this month," Crane said. "Although 1 out of 3 American women has had an abortion by the age of 45, conservatives will argue that abortion coverage is not an essential part of women's health care and should be excluded. If approved, these bans will have a profound impact on low-income, unemployed and other financially vulnerable women."
Push for Counseling Requirements
The November midterm election has also invigorated the movement to impose burdensome counseling requirements. Eighteen states have enacted such laws. More are expected to do so in 2011 because courts have upheld state laws requiring parental notification or consent and sometimes both.
Counseling on the negative psychological effects of abortion--a matter of clinical controversy--is mandated in Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
In five states--Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia--state counseling materials claim a link between breast cancer and abortion, which researchers have discredited. [Note from Just a Blog of Protoplasm: the link has not been discredited, and may provide grounds for future tobacco-style litigation.]
"Ten states now require laws that make ultrasound images available to women during counseling, which is especially disturbing to women who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest," said Jordan Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the U.S. legal program of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based legal advocacy group that litigated more than 20 choice-related cases in nine states in 2010.
Arizona, which has been a leader in introducing these measures, requires both adult women and minors to come to an abortion clinic twice before the procedure. It also requires physicians to tell patients that state services are available to provide financial help, although there are no such funds.
"Until 2007, state legislatures that wanted to impose restrictions like these faced uphill fights in the courts," said Goldberg. "But the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart made it easier, because the court held that the government had a legitimate and substantial interest in protecting fetal life. As a result, laws that chip away at a woman's fundamental right to control her body and make decisions to end unwanted pregnancies have become increasingly common."
More'Viability' Debate Continues
Anti-choice groups are also looking to the states to impose a new standard of so-called viability, or the point at which fetuses can survive outside the womb.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision banned abortion after the fetus could survive outside the womb, typically about 22 weeks after fertilization. The Supreme Court decision has allowed exceptions to save a woman's life as well as to protect her mental or physical health.
But now anti-choice legislators in Montana are proposing a state constitutional amendment that says life begins when an egg is fertilized. Although a similar effort failed in the 2009 legislature and backers were unable to put the measure on the ballot in November, chances of passage in the state are now considered much higher. Republicans, who traditionally support anti-choice legislation, now have a majority in both the Montana Senate and House, the first time the GOP has controlled both state chambers in eight years.
The midterm election returns are also expected to increase attacks by anti-choice organizations outside the legislature and courthouse.
Anti-Abortion State Legislators Rise in Power
by Sharon Johnson
WeNews senior correspondent
State legislatures look poised for what pro-choice activists grimly call a banner year in bills to limit abortion rights.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Pro-choice advocates are bracing for a tough year in state lawmaking.
"Thanks to the gains by conservatives in the Nov. 6 election, 2011 will be a banner year for anti-choice legislation in the states," predicted Donna Crane, policy director of the Washington-based NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political watchdog of the pro-choice movement for more than 30 years.
Only 34 of the more than 600 anti-abortion bills proposed by state lawmakers in 2010 were approved last year. But that number is set to soar, says Crane, because 15 states now have anti-choice legislatures and governors versus 10 in 2010--and anti-choice politicians made gains throughout the country.
"Other states have experienced significant increases in the number of conservatives who are in key positions in legislatures where they can roll back pro-choice laws that have been on the books for 30 years," she said.
The implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the landmark health care overhaul that President Obama signed in March--became a battleground for abortion financing last year and has intensified the desire of anti-choice legislators to introduce bills that will make it more difficult for women to finance the procedure at the state level.
By mid-July, when most state legislatures had adjourned for the year, five states had already passed laws prohibiting abortion coverage in the health insurance plans offered by the new state exchanges, which will begin operating in 2014.
"A deluge of similar bills will be introduced when legislatures reconvene this month," Crane said. "Although 1 out of 3 American women has had an abortion by the age of 45, conservatives will argue that abortion coverage is not an essential part of women's health care and should be excluded. If approved, these bans will have a profound impact on low-income, unemployed and other financially vulnerable women."
Push for Counseling Requirements
The November midterm election has also invigorated the movement to impose burdensome counseling requirements. Eighteen states have enacted such laws. More are expected to do so in 2011 because courts have upheld state laws requiring parental notification or consent and sometimes both.
Counseling on the negative psychological effects of abortion--a matter of clinical controversy--is mandated in Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
In five states--Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia--state counseling materials claim a link between breast cancer and abortion, which researchers have discredited. [Note from Just a Blog of Protoplasm: the link has not been discredited, and may provide grounds for future tobacco-style litigation.]
"Ten states now require laws that make ultrasound images available to women during counseling, which is especially disturbing to women who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest," said Jordan Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the U.S. legal program of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based legal advocacy group that litigated more than 20 choice-related cases in nine states in 2010.
Arizona, which has been a leader in introducing these measures, requires both adult women and minors to come to an abortion clinic twice before the procedure. It also requires physicians to tell patients that state services are available to provide financial help, although there are no such funds.
"Until 2007, state legislatures that wanted to impose restrictions like these faced uphill fights in the courts," said Goldberg. "But the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart made it easier, because the court held that the government had a legitimate and substantial interest in protecting fetal life. As a result, laws that chip away at a woman's fundamental right to control her body and make decisions to end unwanted pregnancies have become increasingly common."
More'Viability' Debate Continues
Anti-choice groups are also looking to the states to impose a new standard of so-called viability, or the point at which fetuses can survive outside the womb.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision banned abortion after the fetus could survive outside the womb, typically about 22 weeks after fertilization. The Supreme Court decision has allowed exceptions to save a woman's life as well as to protect her mental or physical health.
But now anti-choice legislators in Montana are proposing a state constitutional amendment that says life begins when an egg is fertilized. Although a similar effort failed in the 2009 legislature and backers were unable to put the measure on the ballot in November, chances of passage in the state are now considered much higher. Republicans, who traditionally support anti-choice legislation, now have a majority in both the Montana Senate and House, the first time the GOP has controlled both state chambers in eight years.
The midterm election returns are also expected to increase attacks by anti-choice organizations outside the legislature and courthouse.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Most Pro-life House Ever?
Christianity Today's Alicia Cohn reports that prolifers will be busy on Capitol Hill and in the state legislatures in 2011.
Pro-life Efforts to Watch in 2011
by Alicia Cohn
Christianity Today
Although November’s mid-term elections halved the number of pro-life Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, there are hopeful signs for pro-life legislation in the New Year.
January will mark the beginning of the arguably most pro-life House ever,” according to a statement released by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairman of the bi-partisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) has stated that “he wants to be the most pro-life Speaker ever” and Americans United for Life chose Boehner for an award.
The House will likely tackle the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (HR 5939) in the upcoming legislative session. Introduced by Smith and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) in July, Smith said the bill is designed to protect conscience clauses in health care nation-wide. Protecting existing conscience rights remains a high priority in 2011. The Alliance Defense Fund says that the Obama administration “wants to dismantle” a rule passed by the Bush administration in 2008 that prohibited recipients of federal money from discriminating against healthcare professionals refusing to participate in procedures, such as abortion, for reasons of conscience.
Prohibiting the use of federal money to support abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, will also appear on the legislative agenda. The Title 10 Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (HR 614), co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), would prohibit all federal assistance to organizations performing abortions during the period of assistance. Pence said that the act would close the loopholes in the Hyde Amendment, which allows federally-funded organizations to perform abortions if such procedures are separately funded. In June,the Government Accountability Office found that over $1 billion in taxpayer money went to pro-abortion organizations in the past 8 years.
Various states are also expected to tackle pro-life issues in 2011. According to an unreleased NARAL Pro-Choice America analysispreviewed to Politico, the number of anti-abortion governors rose from 21 to 29 in the November election, and the number of states with governments where the governor and the majority legislature are both considered anti-abortion increased from 10 to 15.
In states ranging from Iowa to Tennessee, where anti-abortion legislation has often stalled in committee, anticipation is building that a change in leadership could change the prospects for pro-life legislation as well. Kansas provides one example, where current Democratic Governor Mark Parkinson vetoed a measure preventing the re-establishment of a late-term abortion clinic in the state (following the death of George Tiller and the subsequent closure of his clinic in Wichita). However, Parkinson’s replacement, Governor-elect Republican Sam Brownback, told supporters he would sign any pro-life bill that made it to his desk.
Following Nebraska’s lead — the state passed a late-term abortion ban this year based on the concept of fetal pain — pro-life organizations expect more states to challenge abortion laws by proposing restrictions related to fetus age. Several states, including Kansas, New Jersey, and South Carolina, considered bans on post-viability abortion (abortion past the age a fetus is considered able to live outside the womb) in 2010, according to Americans United for Life. Typically, the “post-viability” age is considered to be between 21 to 28 weeks (Roe v. Wade established viability as “about” 28 weeks); Nebraska’s ban sets the restriction back to 20 weeks. “[F]rom our perspective, if we aren't bucking up against Roe, we're not doing our job,” said Nebraska Right to Life Executive Director Julie Schmit-Albin. "So we did our job in Nebraska and now it's time for the other states to do their job."
Other possible state legislation proposing abortion restrictions will likely include laws requiring an ultrasound to be shown to the patient prior to an abortion--such as the one passed by Oklahoma this year--and measures responding to this year’s federal health care reform that would ban insurance coverage of abortion at the state level.
Pro-life Efforts to Watch in 2011
by Alicia Cohn
Christianity Today
Although November’s mid-term elections halved the number of pro-life Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, there are hopeful signs for pro-life legislation in the New Year.
January will mark the beginning of the arguably most pro-life House ever,” according to a statement released by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairman of the bi-partisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) has stated that “he wants to be the most pro-life Speaker ever” and Americans United for Life chose Boehner for an award.
The House will likely tackle the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (HR 5939) in the upcoming legislative session. Introduced by Smith and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) in July, Smith said the bill is designed to protect conscience clauses in health care nation-wide. Protecting existing conscience rights remains a high priority in 2011. The Alliance Defense Fund says that the Obama administration “wants to dismantle” a rule passed by the Bush administration in 2008 that prohibited recipients of federal money from discriminating against healthcare professionals refusing to participate in procedures, such as abortion, for reasons of conscience.
Prohibiting the use of federal money to support abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, will also appear on the legislative agenda. The Title 10 Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (HR 614), co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), would prohibit all federal assistance to organizations performing abortions during the period of assistance. Pence said that the act would close the loopholes in the Hyde Amendment, which allows federally-funded organizations to perform abortions if such procedures are separately funded. In June,the Government Accountability Office found that over $1 billion in taxpayer money went to pro-abortion organizations in the past 8 years.
Various states are also expected to tackle pro-life issues in 2011. According to an unreleased NARAL Pro-Choice America analysispreviewed to Politico, the number of anti-abortion governors rose from 21 to 29 in the November election, and the number of states with governments where the governor and the majority legislature are both considered anti-abortion increased from 10 to 15.
In states ranging from Iowa to Tennessee, where anti-abortion legislation has often stalled in committee, anticipation is building that a change in leadership could change the prospects for pro-life legislation as well. Kansas provides one example, where current Democratic Governor Mark Parkinson vetoed a measure preventing the re-establishment of a late-term abortion clinic in the state (following the death of George Tiller and the subsequent closure of his clinic in Wichita). However, Parkinson’s replacement, Governor-elect Republican Sam Brownback, told supporters he would sign any pro-life bill that made it to his desk.
Following Nebraska’s lead — the state passed a late-term abortion ban this year based on the concept of fetal pain — pro-life organizations expect more states to challenge abortion laws by proposing restrictions related to fetus age. Several states, including Kansas, New Jersey, and South Carolina, considered bans on post-viability abortion (abortion past the age a fetus is considered able to live outside the womb) in 2010, according to Americans United for Life. Typically, the “post-viability” age is considered to be between 21 to 28 weeks (Roe v. Wade established viability as “about” 28 weeks); Nebraska’s ban sets the restriction back to 20 weeks. “[F]rom our perspective, if we aren't bucking up against Roe, we're not doing our job,” said Nebraska Right to Life Executive Director Julie Schmit-Albin. "So we did our job in Nebraska and now it's time for the other states to do their job."
Other possible state legislation proposing abortion restrictions will likely include laws requiring an ultrasound to be shown to the patient prior to an abortion--such as the one passed by Oklahoma this year--and measures responding to this year’s federal health care reform that would ban insurance coverage of abortion at the state level.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Dangerous Caregivers Not on List
A federal database fully available to hospitals March 1 is missing disciplinary records from states.
When Caregivers Stray: Times/ProPublica Investigation
By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein
More than two decades ago, Congress set out to stop dangerous or incompetent caregivers from crossing state lines and landing in trouble again.
It ordered up a national database allowing hospitals to check for disciplinary actions taken anywhere in the country against nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and other licensed health professionals.
On March 1 -- 22 years later -- the federal government finally plans to let hospitals use it. But the long-awaited repository is missing serious disciplinary actions against what are probably thousands of health providers, according to an investigation by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times.
Some of the missing cases involve providers who have harmed patients -- a nurse, for instance, whose license was pulled after she injected a patient with painkillers in a drugstore parking lot and improperly prescribed methadone to an addict who later died of an overdose.
The omissions took federal health officials by surprise. Only last month, a spokesman for the agency that oversees the database told reporters that "no data is missing." Another official said the agency had been "constantly" checking its data against state licensing board websites.
But Friday, the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) acknowledged that records were missing. She said her agency had launched a "full and complete" review to determine what is wrong and how to fix it.
"We take this very seriously," administrator Mary Wakefield said.
The new information will still go online as planned -- but with a warning that it is incomplete, she said.
Wakefield and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter Friday to the nation's governors asking for their immediate help fixing gaps in the database. It was a matter of "protecting the safety of patients across this country," they wrote.
This summer, the letter said, the federal government will begin publicly listing any state agencies that do not report properly. Wakefield's agency also plans to hold training sessions for state officials and conduct audits to help ensure compliance.
The government for two decades has kept a database of disciplinary actions against doctors and dentists. In 1999, state boards were required to begin filing reports on all other health professionals whose licenses were revoked or restricted.
Yet many states have filed sporadically, if at all. They've faced no penalties.
Reporters compared the total number of disciplinary actions that various states reported to the federal government -- detailed on the HRSA website -- to the states' own records, some of which were posted online. The discrepancies were glaring.
The federal government's site does not include a single report of discipline against any of the thousands of psychiatric technicians or occupational therapists in California.
Yet the website for the California board overseeing psychiatric technicians cites 84 who received severe sanctions in the last two years alone. Among them are two who surrendered their licenses after failing to help a woman who was choking to death on a paper towel and a third convicted of possessing child pornography.
Similarly, the occupational therapy board lists 40 disciplinary actions over five years.
Leaders of both state boards acknowledged that they hadn't been reporting disciplinary cases to the federal government but said they intended to do so in the future.
Judging from the federal numbers, no pharmacist has been disciplined in South Dakota or New Hampshire, and only one each in Alabama, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee. But a search of those states' websites showed hundreds of sanctions.
Reporters found at least nine states that appear to have submitted incomplete records on registered nurses.
Indiana didn't report hundreds of disciplinary actions in 2004 and 2005 -- including the nearly 100 nurses who were indefinitely barred from caring for patients. In one case, a nurse had put a knife to a co-worker's throat.
It's difficult to quantify how much data is missing. In each state, multiple boards oversee various health practitioners. Each has different rules and methods for meting out discipline. Some don't make the information public, and others said they didn't know the number of actions they'd taken.
Troubled professionals can have licenses in multiple states, so checking with just one state's board might not turn up disciplinary actions elsewhere. Moreover, state regulators can be slow to share information with one another, and some professionals hide past sanctions.
Several directors of state licensing agencies said they had assumed that their cases were being reported to the federal government.
Sean Gorman, the director of Indiana's nursing board, learned from reporters that hundreds of his state's actions against nurses had not been. That prompted Indiana to audit compliance by all of the state's health boards.
In Ohio, William T. Winsley, executive director of the pharmacy board, said he had no idea that only one of his state's pharmacist cases had been reported. At his board's November 2009 meeting alone, it pulled the licenses of five, including one who ran an Internet pill mill that dispensed nearly 1.5 million drug doses without valid prescriptions.
The database has had a long and fitful history.
In 1986, amid concerns that doctors were racking up malpractice accusations and then moving freely to other states, Congress called for a central repository of disciplinary actions against them. The next year, lawmakers expanded the requirement to include all healthcare workers.
The idea was to create a one-stop clearinghouse that hospitals and other eligible employers could check. The National Practitioner Data Bank was up and running quickly on doctors and dentists, but a series of logistical, technological and financial hurdles delayed its expansion. Some 280,000 nurses and other practitioners are to be added March 1.
Federal officials predict that the new information will be searched more than 123,000 times annually by health employers and others. The database is not open to the public.
Hospital industry officials said they welcomed the database but emphasized that it's just one tool for screening potential hires, along with criminal checks, drug tests and reference calls.
With an incomplete database, however, employers could be given "a false sense of security that somebody who may be really dangerous isn't, because their name isn't there," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.
The federal government has had plenty of time to make it right, said Wolfe, whose Washington-based group advocates for patient safety. "It's really just embarrassing."
tracy.weber@ propublica.org
charles.ornstein@ propublica.org
About 23 or 24 years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter, I covered the prosecution of a psychiatrist who drugged and raped six male criminal defendants who were entrusted to him by the presiding judge of the Superior Court.
He was a highly respected community member, and when I first heard the accusations, I scoffed. I thought that the prisoners and habitual criminals were trying to besmirch a fine man.
But prosecutor Tom Lannen, bless his soul, hewed to his duty despite community antagonism toward his (criminal) witnesses, and in the end it was clear that the doctor was guilty as charged. The jury found him guilty.
This was not the biggest shock. The most shocking revelations came in a thick presentencing report from the probation officer, reporting that the doctor had been accused and then released in his native Kentucky, Montana, California and Hawaii in turn before he arrived in our community. He was involved in a homosexual slave ring. He was profoundly evil. In each state, he surrendered his state medical license in return for the government dropping or preventing criminal charges against him. Then he packed up and moved on to the next opportunity.
I remember writing a sidebar on national developments to make physician discipline more transparent, so that employers and patients could take reasonable precautions to avoid hiring depraved or incompetent medical professionals. Soon, we were assured, it wouldn't be possible to scam the system like our court-appointed psychiatrist had.
Stories like this Los Angeles Times investigatory piece, on a compromised federal database of physician discipline actions, don't inspire confidence that much has changed during the intervening generation. In this case, it's the diligence of the government to oversee physician discipline that's in question. But neither have doctors themselves made significant progress toward holding their colleagues accountable.
This is yet another contraindication of "tort reform," which immunizes the medical profession from large judgments in civil trials. If incompetent or lawless doctors can prevent peers, regulators and the judiciary system from holding them accountable, what remains for the doctors' victims but a stark choice between "self-help" and acquiescence?
When Caregivers Stray: Times/ProPublica Investigation
By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein
More than two decades ago, Congress set out to stop dangerous or incompetent caregivers from crossing state lines and landing in trouble again.
It ordered up a national database allowing hospitals to check for disciplinary actions taken anywhere in the country against nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and other licensed health professionals.
On March 1 -- 22 years later -- the federal government finally plans to let hospitals use it. But the long-awaited repository is missing serious disciplinary actions against what are probably thousands of health providers, according to an investigation by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times.
Some of the missing cases involve providers who have harmed patients -- a nurse, for instance, whose license was pulled after she injected a patient with painkillers in a drugstore parking lot and improperly prescribed methadone to an addict who later died of an overdose.
The omissions took federal health officials by surprise. Only last month, a spokesman for the agency that oversees the database told reporters that "no data is missing." Another official said the agency had been "constantly" checking its data against state licensing board websites.
But Friday, the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) acknowledged that records were missing. She said her agency had launched a "full and complete" review to determine what is wrong and how to fix it.
"We take this very seriously," administrator Mary Wakefield said.
The new information will still go online as planned -- but with a warning that it is incomplete, she said.
Wakefield and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter Friday to the nation's governors asking for their immediate help fixing gaps in the database. It was a matter of "protecting the safety of patients across this country," they wrote.
This summer, the letter said, the federal government will begin publicly listing any state agencies that do not report properly. Wakefield's agency also plans to hold training sessions for state officials and conduct audits to help ensure compliance.
The government for two decades has kept a database of disciplinary actions against doctors and dentists. In 1999, state boards were required to begin filing reports on all other health professionals whose licenses were revoked or restricted.
Yet many states have filed sporadically, if at all. They've faced no penalties.
Reporters compared the total number of disciplinary actions that various states reported to the federal government -- detailed on the HRSA website -- to the states' own records, some of which were posted online. The discrepancies were glaring.
The federal government's site does not include a single report of discipline against any of the thousands of psychiatric technicians or occupational therapists in California.
Yet the website for the California board overseeing psychiatric technicians cites 84 who received severe sanctions in the last two years alone. Among them are two who surrendered their licenses after failing to help a woman who was choking to death on a paper towel and a third convicted of possessing child pornography.
Similarly, the occupational therapy board lists 40 disciplinary actions over five years.
Leaders of both state boards acknowledged that they hadn't been reporting disciplinary cases to the federal government but said they intended to do so in the future.
Judging from the federal numbers, no pharmacist has been disciplined in South Dakota or New Hampshire, and only one each in Alabama, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee. But a search of those states' websites showed hundreds of sanctions.
Reporters found at least nine states that appear to have submitted incomplete records on registered nurses.
Indiana didn't report hundreds of disciplinary actions in 2004 and 2005 -- including the nearly 100 nurses who were indefinitely barred from caring for patients. In one case, a nurse had put a knife to a co-worker's throat.
It's difficult to quantify how much data is missing. In each state, multiple boards oversee various health practitioners. Each has different rules and methods for meting out discipline. Some don't make the information public, and others said they didn't know the number of actions they'd taken.
Troubled professionals can have licenses in multiple states, so checking with just one state's board might not turn up disciplinary actions elsewhere. Moreover, state regulators can be slow to share information with one another, and some professionals hide past sanctions.
Several directors of state licensing agencies said they had assumed that their cases were being reported to the federal government.
Sean Gorman, the director of Indiana's nursing board, learned from reporters that hundreds of his state's actions against nurses had not been. That prompted Indiana to audit compliance by all of the state's health boards.
In Ohio, William T. Winsley, executive director of the pharmacy board, said he had no idea that only one of his state's pharmacist cases had been reported. At his board's November 2009 meeting alone, it pulled the licenses of five, including one who ran an Internet pill mill that dispensed nearly 1.5 million drug doses without valid prescriptions.
The database has had a long and fitful history.
In 1986, amid concerns that doctors were racking up malpractice accusations and then moving freely to other states, Congress called for a central repository of disciplinary actions against them. The next year, lawmakers expanded the requirement to include all healthcare workers.
The idea was to create a one-stop clearinghouse that hospitals and other eligible employers could check. The National Practitioner Data Bank was up and running quickly on doctors and dentists, but a series of logistical, technological and financial hurdles delayed its expansion. Some 280,000 nurses and other practitioners are to be added March 1.
Federal officials predict that the new information will be searched more than 123,000 times annually by health employers and others. The database is not open to the public.
Hospital industry officials said they welcomed the database but emphasized that it's just one tool for screening potential hires, along with criminal checks, drug tests and reference calls.
With an incomplete database, however, employers could be given "a false sense of security that somebody who may be really dangerous isn't, because their name isn't there," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.
The federal government has had plenty of time to make it right, said Wolfe, whose Washington-based group advocates for patient safety. "It's really just embarrassing."
tracy.weber@ propublica.org
charles.ornstein@ propublica.org
Ornstein and Weber are senior reporters at ProPublica in New York. Their previous stories about gaps in nursing oversight can be found at latimes.com/nurses and propublica.org/nurses.
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