Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Statistics of Physician Elimination - Career Destruction

Out of curiosity, I visited the National Practitioner Data Bank's (NPDB) website, and I found the "NPDB Summary Report" at
http://www.npdb-hipdb.hrsa.gov/resources/reports/NPDBSummaryReport.pdf
It is actually a good source of information.

The NPDB Summary Report starts by stating: "The following is a summary of reports submitted and accepted into the NPDB for each professional category. This data covers the period from September 1, 1990 through April 2, 2011. Professional categories which were not available for the entire time period are noted."

Then there is a "Data Disclaimer": Reports of adverse clinical privileges and professional society membership actions against practitioners other than physicians and dentists, (e.g., chiropractors, psychologists, podiatrists) are submitted voluntarily.

I pointed my attention then  to the column "LICENSURE,CLINICAL PRIVILEGES, PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP, AND PEER REVIEW ORGANIZATION REPORTS.  I chose some categories just to have some idea as to how many individuals in which professions are subjected to that career assassination.

Dentists: 20,239
Nurse Midwife: 94
Nurse Practitioner: 921
Hospital Administrator: 0
Licensed Practical or Vocational Nurse: 78,421
Nurse Anesthetist: 337
Osteopathic Physician (DO): 8,129
Osteopathic Physician Intern/Resident (DO): 153
Physician (MD): 82,683
Physician Intern/Resident (MD): 588

So, the safest on that regards is to be a Hospital Administrator.  Interesting.  And, being a trainee resident or even an intern is no reason for mercy.  Career destruction and elimination based on arbitrary criteria is just the way it is, no matter how junior or advanced in the career someone is.

Breakdown of MD by State, from highest to lowest number of physicians (MDs) whose careers, livelihood have been threatened with career capital punishment. 

CA    10,019
NY    6,561
OH    4,414
TX     4,111
FL     3,885
IL      3,647
VA     3,411
PA     3,004
AZ    2,591
MI    2,525
NJ    2,481
GA    2,262
CO    2,088
MA    2,074
MD    2,025
WA     1,877
NC    1,832
KY    1,661
LA    1,399
MO    1,377
TN     1,299
AL     1,152
OR    1,116
IN    1,107
MN    1,021
OK    979
WV     972
SC     958
WI     936
IA    918
CT    897
MS    751
KS    748
NV    606
UT     565
AR    539
NM    523
ME    429
DC     393
NE    381
ND    376
NH    354
AK    343
RI     334
VT     296
ID    285
HI    278
WY     178
DE    164
SD     149
PR     44

Notice that these are raw numbers. To transform those into meaningful statistical values, in the very least I need a denominator.  Actually deciding what the denominator should be is not easy.  Is it the population of the state? The population of a certain age? The number of practicing MDs? If so, the current number of MD"s, realizing that the data cover from 1990 till 2011, so, which MD population would be used, etc. 

Regardless, for someone to become a physician, one endures a lot that is well known to everyone.  And not too many really would be willing to pursue that route if they know that more than 90,000 were kicked out.  And they were not kicked out by an objective, fair or impartial process, but were eliminated and destroyed by a flawed process that is open for exploitation and abuse, executed by their peers and called  the"peer review".  There is nothing Holy about it.