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. TOC: Executive Summary How to Use this Report Introduction Findings Conclusions Recommendations for Action Appendix 1: Glossary Appendix 2: How We Compiled This Report Appendix 3: Addresses of Federal Agencies References EXCERPT: A license to practice medicine is a hard-won privilege. It is a privilege to hear our innermost thoughts, to see us naked, to cut us open, and to provide us with potentially dangerous drugs. Yet for too long the state and federal government agencies chartered to protect us from those no longer fit to hold that privilege have fallen down on the job.
Many state medical boards and other regulatory agencies have either entirely failed to catch doctors guilty of incompetence, drunkenness, or patient abuse, or have let them get away with slaps on the wrist such as fines or reprimands. For just as long, doctors and their ostensible gate-keepers have failed to realize that consumers need to protect themselves. They have either refused to provide information on those shoddy doctors they have spotted or they have made it awfully hard to get.
For more than a quarter of a century, Public Citizen's Health Research Group has been striving to provide consumers with information they can use to make educated choices about their doctors. It has not been an easy road. Doctors generally don't like comparative information on quality to be released.
Information in the one federal repository of disciplinary actions by state medical boards and federal agencies - the National Practitioner Data Bank - is kept secret from both patients and from almost all physicians. It is partially in protest to this congressionally mandated secrecy that Public Citizen's Health Research Group has established our own publicly-available data bank of doctors who have been disciplined. What follows are just a few of the main findings from our study of the data as reported in the national version of 16,638 Questionable Doctors and in the regional versions:
16,638 doctors disciplined by either state medical boards or federal agencies are listed in the national books. This represents an increase of 4,652 new physicians since the last time we analyzed the data in early 1996.
These 16,638 doctors had a total of 34,049 disciplinary actions taken against them, the most common of which were probation (6,802 times), license suspension (3,197 times), fine (3,141 times), and license revocation (2,889 times). Overall, the majority of physicians who were disciplined for the five most serious offenses were not required to stop practicing even temporarily. Thus, it is likely that most of the doctors in these above categories of very serious offenses are currently practicing medicine, with few if any of their patients aware of these offenses.
Our study of the nation's medical quality control system led us to conclude that:
Too little discipline is still being done. The rate of serious disciplinary actions was only 3.96 per 1,000 doctors or 2,731 serious actions in 1996. Therefore only an extremely small fraction of the nation's doctors face any serious state sanctions each year despite the fact that an estimated 80,000 patients are killed and 234,000 injured as a result of negligence in hospitals, most cases involving doctors.
Far too few state medical disciplinary actions are for medical negligence or incompetence. Of the 14,053 instances in which we knew the offense for which a disciplinary action was taken (other than action by another state), only 2,531 (18% were for substandard care, incompetence or negligence.
What You Can Do Consult the new edition of Public Citizen's Health Research Group's 16,638 Questionable Doctors to learn which doctors have been disciplined and why. You will also learn how to ensure your safety when choosing a doctor, how to complain about a doctor, and what you can do to improve the quality of medical care you receive.
Complain. File your complaints about poor medical care or medical misconduct with your state medical board and with the federal Department of Health and Human Services. If the offense occurred in a hospital, also file a complaint with the hospital peer review committee. Your complaints are needed to protect others!
Form citizens' action or victims' rights groups to improve medical quality assurance in your area. The American Association of Retired Persons publishes a guide that can help you mobilize a group for reform. Try to get a representative of your group appointed to the state medical board or the Medicare Peer Review Organization for your state.
