Stop the whining

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

It is no secret that the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners has often done a poor job of protecting the public from bad doctors and shoddy medical practices. The only people who do not seem to realize that are members of the board.

The latest example of this was a news release issued Tuesday by Dr. Charles Held, the board’s president, in response to an Oct. 25 story in the Las Vegas Sun that provided recent examples of the board’s substandard performance.

Declaring “Enough is enough,” Held whined that there has been too much misinformation about the board and that it “pursues the goal of protecting the citizens of Nevada.”

In reality the board has had a long history of turning its back on Nevadans. During the state’s contentious medical malpractice debate this decade, critics were on target when they charged that the board failed to make disciplinary actions and settlement agreements with law-breaking doctors readily available to the public. The board also was chastised for rarely holding meetings in Southern Nevada, where a majority of the state’s population resides.

The Reno Gazette-Journal in 2004 published an exposé revealing that Nevada had one of the nation’s worst records of disciplining doctors while allowing physicians facing serious allegations to avoid punishment.

The Nevada Legislature has responded to criticism by passing laws making the board more responsive to the public, including fuller disclosure of actions taken against doctors. But serious problems persist. Last year the board’s incompetence was on full display when it reacted to the hepatitis C outbreak in Southern Nevada with the speed of a glacier.

Another puzzling board performance involved Dr. Kevin Buckwalter, the subject of stories in the Sun for prescribing narcotics in a way that was linked to patient deaths. The Drug Enforcement Administration followed up those reports by citing Buckwalter in nine patient deaths, causing the agency to revoke his license to prescribe narcotics. The state board did the same but inexplicably allowed the doctor to keep his medical license.

It may be that the only way to correct these debacles is to have legislators dismantle the board and let a state agency discipline doctors. What is obvious is that the way Nevada regulates its doctors is broken.