Questionable Doctors Disciplined by State and Federal Governments: California, Hawaii

In this regional edition for California and Hawaii, 2192 doctors are named who have had disciplinary action taken against their license. This project, titled 16,638 Questionable Doctors, was designed to assist consumers in making better informed health care choices. The individual doctor listings aid patients in understanding the quality of care they would potentially receive or have already received from a particular practitioner. Find out which doctors have been disciplined and why, how to increase your safety when choosing a doctor, how to file a complaint about a doctor and how to improve your quality of medical care.

Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe has been the Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group since 1971. Since 1995 he has been an Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is currently a member of both the American Federation for Clinical Research and the Society for General Internal Medicine. His awards include receiving the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1990.

He studied chemistry at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. His medical degree is from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio and his internship and residency in internal medicine. In 1966 he began working at the National Institutes of Health where he did research on aspects of blood-clotting and on alcoholism.

Dr. Wolfe met Ralph Nader in Washington, D.C. at a meeting of the American Patients Association. He began advising Mr. Nader on health problems and helped in the recruitment of medical student volunteers who worked for Mr. Nader. Dr. Wolfe then established the Health Research Group in November 1971 and became a full-time Public Citizen employee in 1972.

Some successes of the Group are: the banning of the drugs phenformin, Oraflex, Tandearil, Suprofen; the requirement that aspirin products have a label that warns that children and teenagers may develop Reye's Syndrome by using aspirin in treatment of the symptoms of colds and flu; other areas of focus include the researching and banning of dangerous medical devices such as the defective Bjork-Shiley, 60-degree Convexo-Concave artificial heart valve; forcing a smokeless tobacco warning on labels and in advertisements; studies of medical malpractice and doctor discipline.

Major Health Research Group publications include Pills That Don't Work; Over the Counter Pills That Don't Work; Worst Pills/Best Pills; Care of the Seriously Mentally Ill: A Rating of State Programs; Medical Records: Getting Yours; Unnecessary Cesarean Sections: How To Cure A National Epidemic; Poor Health Care for Poor Americans: A Ranking of State Medicaid Programs; Women's Health Alert, 16,638 Questionable Doctors and monthly newsletters entitled Health Letter and Worst Pills Best Pills News.