DOCTORS SUE TEXAS MEDICAL BOARD FOR MISCONDUCT - Cites institutional culture of retaliation & intimidation
The entire Texas Medical Board (TMB) and its officials have been named in a lawsuit filed by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). The complaint, filed this week in District Court in Texarkana, accuses the board of misconduct while performing its official duties, specifically:
- Manipulation of anonymous complaints;
- Conflicts of interest;
- Violation of due process;
- Breach of privacy; and
- Retaliation against those who speak out.
“The situation has reached the crisis point for patients and doctors,” said Jane M. Orient, M.D, Executive Director of AAPS. “Our members are too afraid of retaliation to sue the Board as individuals.”
The lawsuit specifically points out misconduct by Roberta Kalafut, the Board president. The law suit claims that Kalafut “arranged for her husband to file anonymous complaints again other physicians, including her competitors in Abilene…”
She then “…worked inside the TMB, with other defendants, to discipline doctors based on anonymous complaints filed by her physician husband.”
The lawsuit also charges that Kalafut and Donald Patrick, Executive Director, knew about the conflict of interest of Keith Miller while he was Chair of the Disciplinary Process Review Committee. Miller served as plaintiffs’ witness in at least 50 cases brought before the Board without disclosing that to the disciplined doctors or the public.
During a marathon 11-and-a-half hour legislative hearing about the Texas Medical Board on October 23, 2007, Kalafut and Patrick admitted under oath that they were aware of the conflicts of interest.
“It seems clear from the sworn testimony before the legislative committee that they knew about the problems and had done what they could to hide them,” said Dr. Orient.
The lawsuit demands that the Court put an immediate stop to abuses by the Board, and that previous disciplinary actions tainted by the Board’s violations be re-opened.
“Doctors in Texas should not be forced to practice in this atmosphere of fear and intimidation,” said Dr. Orient. “Complaints from our members have identified the TMB as probably the worst in the country. It’s bad for patients when their doctors are afraid that doing the right thing could result in licensure action.”
COMPLAINT AVAILABLE: A copy of the complaint is available at www.aapsonline.org.
NOTE: AAPS is a non-profit, professional association of physicians in all specialties, dedicated since 1943 to protection of the patient-physician relationship. It accepts no corporate or government funding, and its board members and officers serve without compensation.
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December 21st, 2007 at 11:06 pm
How does Texas compare with other states? Other countries?
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Does power corrupt, or is it simply that those who are corrupt lust for power?
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
The decline in applications of highly qualified persons to medical school has brought many unqualifed individuals wih an immoral and unethical value system into our profession. These people must be rooted out and ostracized.
December 22nd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
At last the foxes are fighting amongst themselves over control of the henhouse. I suppose too many hens have been killed for there to be enough left for all foxes to feast upon. Thus the foxes begin to feast upon each other. May they bleed with the same pain they have inflicted on the hens all these years. Texas is 49th in quality of healthcare among states, but we have the fattest foxes around!
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Fear and terror are shaping the medical practice in this country USA everywhere.
It doesn’t take much to destroy the livelihood of a doctor.
Doctors are silenced everywhere.
Slaving doctors are the new form of slavery that appeared in USA since 1986.
In 1986, the Congress introduced the healthcare Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) that gave an absolute power to few doctors. This law destroyed the integrity of medical practice everywhere. This law allows few doctors who are able to arrive to power to control the majority of doctors. This law prevented the victim doctor from seeking the civil court to protect his civil rights no matter how severe is the civil rights violations.
Does power corrupt? The answer is yes,
Do those who are corrupt lust for power? The answer is also yes,
Since, the problem is not having corrupted people or corrupted doctors, the problem is having bad law that allow for corruption and provide full protection to corrupted doctors and prevent victim doctors from seeing fairness at court or exercising their constitutional rights.
Silencing doctors at the hospital level and at the medical board level have prevented doctors from reporting serious errors and have made doctors ineffective members of the healthcare team.
The fetal error rate in hospitals has reached very high level across the nation, over 100,000 deaths in hospitals every year. Death due to errors in hospitals is the fourth cause of death. On the other hand, the rate of error reporting is very low. Experts have attributed this discrepancy to the fear of error reporting.
Well, after 21 years from passing the HCQIA-1986, medicine in USA is controlled by corrupted doctors everywhere and at every level. It is the way of life now. The new generation of doctors realizes that they don’t need to be good doctors to survive but they need to be good politicians. This is the new rule model of doctors in this country; a model that is shaped by fear and power.
Doctors in USA are surrounded by fear from all directions:
1. fear from not doing good in medical exams
2. fear from errors that affect their patients
3. fear from lawyers and malpractice
4. fear from powerful colleagues
5. fear from hospital administration
6. fear from the Medical Board
7. fear from government raid
8. fear from inflation, overhead increase and loss of income
Doctors are able to control fear from 1,2 & 3rd cases by working hard to excel.
Doctors are not able to control their fear from 4, 5, 6, and 7th because they are unpredictable and subjective and usually unfair. All are controlled by administrative procedures despite the fact that they could destroy the livelihood of the doctor. Things could be completely out of proportion and random.
The 8th item is also out of doctor’s control.
We need to go the root of the problem and fix it if we are serious about fixing it for the sake of our patients.
The problem is there are many stakeholders who are interested in leaving doctors controlled e.g. government, insurance companies, etc to control the cost of medicine.
It will take a miracle to free the doctor in USA,
Pray that we see the day when the doctor is free to speak and be a leader again in the healthcare team….
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
The Medical Licensing Boards are rubber stamps for the self-styled lawyer prosecutor. The Board is a front organization for yet another lawyer operation to take over health care. This land pirate has no qualification to judge doctors. When you say, government, what are you really saying? You are saying, a 99% owned subsidiary of the lawyer criminal syndicate, no matter the elected figurehead.
The results is a long series of lawyer gotchas on trivial regulatory deviations. Meanwhile, highly dangerous doctors, total threats to patient survival go unmolested by the paper shuffler, lazy, incompetent threat to clinical care.
This doctor hater land pirate oppressor should face full accountability for his outrageous, high false positive and high false negative failure rates. Impossible now. This land pirate has granted himself total discretion and immunity. Statute should permit lawyer malpractice tort litigation against the incompetent doctor oppressor.
Ultimately, a statute must exclude the land pirate internal traitor from all benches, all legislative seats, and all responsible policy positions in the Executive Branch, as statute excludes the felon. No one who has passed 1L should be permitted in any of those responsible positions.
I strongly urge all falsely accused doctors to assert their rights to be made whole by civil justice, and to sue the Board, the lawyer prosecutor, seeking to pierce the unconscionable, self-dealt immunity of this internal traitor, in federal court. Seek injunctions, enforced by clasping these criminals in irons for criminal contempt.
These false regulatory attacks on clinical care intentionally interfere with all the contracts of the doctor, are oppressive, unjust. Even if the doctor’s claim is dismissed on first pleading, the doctor hater oppressors will lose their jobs for generating defense costs exceeding their value to the state.
What if injunctions and tort litigation fails to deter these enemies of clinical care? A national boycott of these named traitors, and their obsequious doctor collaborators, by all service and product providers should send them to a Stone Age lifestyle.
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
The notion that medical boards or hospital boards are best to police the profession flies in the face of practice. If this was the case we would have stifled the runaway malpractice claims. This has obviously hobbled our ability to poersuade anybody that we can effectively police our own- we eat our children. In fact the malpractice bar and the medical boards work hand in glove. Before a plaintiff’s attorney procedes with a case, he has the physician deneounced to the medical board that then, at governemnt expense, hires an expert to review the complaint. Depending on the disposition or prejudice of the reviewing physician, the board can then find problem with the physician, or not. If they do, the plaintiff has a large part of his case prepared for him and he procedes; if not, he tells the patient he is sorry and shoves them out the door- even if they do have a potential case. The medical board becomes a screening tool. The other issue is the use of the board by politicians to gain leverage over doctors and their societies. This is as unjust as can be. Is it better not to practice? I don’t know. Is it better to withold treatment from a patient and tell them why you fear helping them? Maybe.
December 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 am
John: Where do you doctor? Travel to Canada for their Commie Care. You would be happier.
Try getting care in Canada that costs more than a few dozen dollars. Try reporting your doctor to a Canadian provincial licensing board for abandonment, when you get nothing. Report back.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I have just been through another round of “from-scratch” recredentialing.
All of the United States physicians have had the grueling, annoying, demeaning, and time-consuming experience of such hugely redundant recredentialing by a wide variety of frauds who are never questioned about their own credentials and who are not interested in patient care or consumer protection, but only in justifying their own sinecures.
Medical boards, hospitals, clinics, liability insurance underwriters, health insurance empanellers, Medicare, Medicaid, Human Resource departments, quality assurance departments, and others act as if each one of them is a combination of CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and Police Departments and as if each physician is a likely impostor, serial killer, sexual predator, or psychotic derelict. These agencies duplicate each other’s investigations, blow derogatory information out of all proportion, cause absurd investigations, delay hiring and services, invent new ID numbers and “performance” criteria that make no medical or even horse sense, generate mountains of paperwork and computer time, maintain enormous staffs on their permanent payrolls, and reap enormous revenues from doctors, patients, and the healthy insured, who pay through their noses for this make-believe security.
Their yield, in terms of discovering rotten doctors or improving patient care is so meager that no sane cost-benefit analysis could possibly justify it. In addition, they have frequently generated witch hunts and unnecessary legal proceedings whose cost is at least as large.
And doctors meekly submit to this kafkayesque machine, often offering each other as fodder and thus compounding its insanity rather than curbing it. Is there a way back to sanity?
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I am very happy to see the AAPS advancng this assertive, long overdue, litigation. I was proud of you for advancing the vaccination risk considerations that you did for people’s health. I was sad that some of your officials chose to prevent my presentation(s) that would have enabled and encouraged your members to take more assertive actions earlier to prevent the damages your litigation now seeks to suspend.
In support of your organization, these litigation efforts, and AAPS members, I am prepared to gift your leadership and membership copies of my latest documentary DVD, In Lies We Trust (See http://www.inlieswetrust.com).
Moreover, I encourage your leaders to collaborate with other organizations, such as the World Organization for Natural Medicine (See: http://www.wonm.org/) and the World Organization for Natural Medicine Practitioners. (See: http://www.wonmp.us) in strengthening the numbers of organized professionals dedicated to restoring scientific integrity to medicine.
Yours in the Spirit of health and public service,
Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H., D.N.M., D.M.M.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am
You think you have problems now?
Wait until the ‘powers that be’ have a new enforcement tool at their disposal: the electronic medical record, in its current form designed by bureaucrats. It is a technology currently built to enrich the fat cats, that is likely going to be imposed on you, at your own expense. See this posting:
“EMR’s: Take it or Leavitt, HHS secretary says (while putting a gun to doctor’s heads) - and should physicians boycott EMR’s as a political statement?”
at
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/12/emrs-take-it-or-leavitt-dhhs-secretary.html
December 26th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Why doctors are silent and can’t advocate for their patients any more. Why we see hospitals giving our patients used inhalers that could transmit serious respiratory infections and we are quite about it.
Why we became ineffective inside the hospitals walking around like chicken without a head, smiling like idiots trying to please people on power and whispering about errors happening every day that is taking the life of many patients.
Why we are quite about fetal errors happening by the oppressor doctors in the hospital. Why hospitals are transformed to criminals and terror harboring places that are controlling the life of patients and the majority of doctors. I am sick tired of all this hippocracy…
Hospitals and insurance companies not excluding Medicare and Medicaid are manipulating doctors and empowering few doctors to control the majority of doctors to control the cost of medicine. Some classes that I attend are calling it “hurding the cats”.
Doctors who are crazy to follow the Hippocratic oath and stand strong against their oppressors defending their patients and the integrity of medicine end paying a dearly price and discover at the end that they did not accomplish anything when their oppressors protected by greedy lawyers celebrate a new kill and hang up their kill in public to terrorize other doctors and dare them.
It is a system based on Sadaam Hessian way in controlling Iraq.
Unfortunately, we spent billions of dollars to rote out Sadam Hesain when we have thousands of Sadam Hessian controlling each hospital in USA.
The first thing we need to do to improve the quality of healthcare in USA is to free doctors from slavery by getting ride of the HCQIA-1986 and giving the doctors the right to take their cases to the court and be judged by a jury that is selected according to the constitution.
It is the time to get ride of the military tribunes that exist in each hospital and that judge and execute doctors behind doors.
The doctors have the right to see a day of fairness in the court.
Why the doctors should be deprived from their basic rights of being judged by a jury in the court of law?
As long as doctors are prevented from going to court to protect themselves, doctors will remain silent and we will have more criminals and politicians controlling medicine. The politicaly correct generation of doctors.
I came to America 17 years ago looking for freedom leaving behind me oppressed system. After reaching to the top of medicine in USA and after having all these degrees and qaulifications, I discover that I don’t have freedom to speak up for my patient in the hospital and I discover also that no one care about qualifications or degrees. What is more important is how to suck up and how to get to power or at least serve someone who is on power.
What a waste!
December 30th, 2007 at 8:21 am
The AAPS-lawsuit is a flamboyant move and I wish the effort well but the lawyer in black robes who presides at court will very likely favor the establishment-defendants and either dismiss the suit immediately or, if he accepts it for hearing, find in favor of the defendants and establish a precedent of future federal immunity for medical regulators to complement the state-immunity they already enjoy.
The Supreme-Court decision of Daubert v. Merrell-Dow Pharmaceutical Co., Inc. (1993) established a higher standard of scientific evidence than the Frye-standard from the 1920s but federal judges have no clue about science, so they’ve been mucking it up ever since. Even so, plaintiffs would do well at least to try and hold the court’s feet to the fire and get it to admit only valid science. If they did that, they could prove, among other things, that peer-review, which relies on retrospective chart-review, is closely analogous to case-control research. Case-control research is valid only for generating hypotheses, not for definitive conclusions but even it relies on controls. Peer-review does not. Therefore, peer-review is inherently invalid, from the start, yet all regulators, in every state and terriory, rely entirely on such invalid peer-review in reaching the invalid conclusions on which they must rely to justify the punishment they mete out. If some plaintiff could establish the precedent of scientific invalidity of peer-review/regulation in some federal court, medical regulation, as well as hospital-based peer-review, as we know it, would have to vanish but it would be an uphill battle.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I am a licensing professional who has licensed over 7000 physicians across the 50 States. 400 of these were in Texas. Texas is basically “Anti-Physician”. They purposely delay the licensing process. The attitude of the Board Members from top to bottom is one of arrogance and supremacy. Physician are only “allowed” to call their “Licensure Investigator” (notice the title of the representative) between 8-2 on Friday Only. They don’t answer emails, phone calls, or written correspondence. It is quite common for applications, verifications, and forms to be lost without recourse by the medical board. They make The licensure time typically takes 6-12 months with the application expiration rate typically running around 35%. Compare this to New Mexico, which has more verification requirements and on paper a more difficult administrative process… New Mexico averages licensing physicians between 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 months. What is the difference? The management of the Medical Board. They should really change their name to the Texas Medical Mafia Board. It is managed as a Family Business. All Physicians are guilty until proven innocent. Our company has now adopted the policy of trying to discourage physicians from applying to Texas if they have other options.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I am a physician licensed in Texas. My husband did his fellowship in Texas(with a temporary permit from the Boards), he graduated from the same medical school as me, and, still, it was impossible for him to get a medical license in Texas. We had to leave our house and move to a different state because of the situation. We were fantasizing about suing the Boards but we just don’t have time for this. My husband got a New York license in no time, he also got a Missouri license in 2 months. What relevance has the following question from one of Texas ridiculous application forms ” how were the preceptors in medical school compensated?”. Does it matter if you are already a Board Certified physician? Do you have to prove your identity begining with the day care in order to get a Texas license?
February 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I hope that the governing body of Texas will take the time to determine the truth on this matter and act accordingly. It is a shame to have this licensing athority under such a cloud of mistrust. Surely the governer can take the time to hear the complaints of our doctors.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I have discussed the worsening situation with the State Board of Texas with many others and we all agree something must be done but organizing physicians is like “herding cats”. I am sure Texas is not unique in this issue and many other states will be interested in what we do. With the increasing rules passed by the board without input by the bulk of the physicians in the state, the board has become an over regulating, over reactive “bull dozer” rolling over good physicians over minor rule violations. In fact many of the rules should not even exist. We, as good caring physicians, do not need more and more intrusive government invading into our practices. We all do a nearly impossible job on a daily basis by treating the various simple to extremely complicated patients who walk through our doors and those we see in the hospital. As one attorney once put it “who else is asked to put their finger up someone’s ass and tell them what’s wrong with them!” “You do an impossible job in an impossible environment and held to impossible standards.” We all want the best for our patients and most physicians truly try their best. We are all human and make mistakes, but do those mistakes require the public embarrassment, financial penalties, unreasonable monitoring and Gestapo like attack by our board? I don’t think so and I hope you and others agree.
Our state board was designed to license good physicians and to protect the public from dangerous physicians. But now the extensive rules that have been passed over the years, even encompassing poor hand writing, have become excessive and unnecessary. Minor violations generate board investigations and reviews. Most physicians feel helpless against “city hall” and simply rollover and accept the excessively punitive agreed orders they are presented. The high cost of legal defense is not affordable by many of the physicians who are wrongfully attacked and so accept the penalty despite the injustice. This unchallenged attack of many of us and our colleagues across the state has set a dangerous precedence. The board has subsequently become more and more aggressive and pulls in physicians for hearings with little provocation.
The worse part of all of this is the physicians are practicing more and more defensive medicine, not because of malpractice issues but because of board issues. I myself am spending more and more time with my charts and not with my patients. I can’t listen to my patients because my head is in the chart making sure I write enough to satisfy the board so they will not punish me. I am all for good documentation but there is a point in which it becomes excessive and for defense purpose and not good medicine. More and more physicians are now using electronic medical records to CYA. They can simply press a button and print out a massive note, consult or report that covers all requirements weather they actually completed the exam or not. The citizens of the state of Texas are suffering the fall out that this board attitude has created. Well meaning Physicians have been attacked so much that they and their colleagues no longer prescribe some life improving medications, over utilize expensive lab and x-ray tests and refer out to high cost specialist to cover their rears. How many of you will NOT write pain medications any longer and thus allow your patients to suffer needlessly, because of the aggressive attacks by the board on you or your colleagues?
I have talked to attorneys for the state board and they, off the record, have given me the direction necessary to effect the changes we all know needs to occur in Austin. My dilemma is getting the word out to the majority of physicians in the state to openly discuss debate and consider action necessary to improve the function of the board and thus improve the healthcare in the state of Texas. None of us want bad or dangerous doctors practicing medicine but we equally don’t want to be attacked or see our brethren attacked needlessly and punitively over minor issues. By opening up a forum that all the physicians in Texas can discuss this issue we can hopefully improve the way the board functions and thus improve healthcare to all citizens of the state of Texas.
I am asking you to contact me, your colleagues; your state representatives and senators so that we may affect a positive change in the way the board functions and the practice of medicine in the state of Texas. This is a very serous call to ARMS! If we do not act now we may all be victims of this abuse. We must stand united or we will surely fall divided.
Sincerely,
Michael D. Williams, D.O.
Cedar Hill, TEXAS
mdwilliamsdo@pol.net