Cross-Sectional Analysis of the 1039 U.S. Physicians Reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank for Sexual Misconduct, 2003-2013

Azza AbuDagga; Sidney M Wolfe; Michael Carome; Robert E Oshel

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147800

Cross-Sectional Analysis of the 1039 U.S. Physicians Reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank for Sexual Misconduct, 2003-2013

PLoS One. 2016 Feb 3;11(2):e0147800. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147800. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Azza AbuDagga¹, Sidney M Wolfe¹, Michael Carome¹, Robert E Oshel²

Affiliations

¹ Health Research Group, Public Citizen, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.
² National Practitioner Data Bank (Retired), Department of Health and Human Services, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America.

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.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Child
Child, Preschool
Crime Victims
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Humans
Infant
Male
Middle Aged
National Practitioner Data Bank* / statistics & numerical data
Physicians* / statistics & numerical data
Professional Misconduct* / statistics & numerical data
Retrospective Studies
Sexual Behavior*
United States
Young Adult

Grants and funding

AA, SMW, and MC are employees of Public Citizen. This study was funded by Public Citizen: www.citizen.org. REO received no specific funding for this work and contributed his time and efforts on this study in-kind to Pubic Citizen. The funder had no role in study design, data selection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.