Editorial: Making informed choices

Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005 | 10:19 a.m.

A report released earlier this month says federal health agencies routinely ignore a requirement to report to a national database the payment of medical malpractice claims against the government -- a measure with which private entities have been compelled to comply since 1986.

From 1997 to 2004 the Health and Human Services Department failed to report 474 cases to the National Practitioner Data Bank that should have been reported, U.S. Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson said in the report.

The Indian Health Services was responsible for 290 of the cases, the report says, and 179 other cases stemmed from claims against the Health Resources Administration. The National Institutes of Health failed to report five cases.

The federal database is not open to the public but is used by state medical licensing boards that may access it when deciding whether to grant, restrict or revoke doctors' licenses. Hospitals and health plans also use it to check on doctors' records before hiring them or granting them practicing privileges.

A 1986 law requires private entities, such as hospitals and insurance companies, to report to the database all malpractice payments. While such payments do not prove any claim to be true, a pattern of claims could mean that a doctor's record needs closer examination before adding him or her to a facility's staff or a health plan.

A 1990 Health and Human Services policy directive required federal health agencies to also report malpractice payments made on behalf of their doctors. But, as Levinson's report shows, many have refused to do so.

Federal health officials said they did not want to be held to the same standards as private sector entities and did not want to report payments in cases where they believed that the medical care had been appropriate.

No doctor wants his record marred by a payment that, deserved or not, implies a mistake. But the boards charged with licensing doctors and the hospitals that hire them must know whether physicians have been sued for malpractice once or repeatedly. Doctors in the private sector must abide by the law. It is only fair that those working for the federal government do so as well.

When it comes to the quality of medical care and the skills of those who deliver it, there is no such thing as too much information.