States fail to report health professionals' discipline to U.S. database; Kentucky worst scofflaw

A federal government database designed to track problem health professionals across state lines has been undermined by hundreds of state agencies who have never reported information required for the database, Tracy Webster and Charles Ornstein of ProPublica report. Many such professionals relocate in rural areas that are happy to have them because the areas are medically under-served.

The database "is supposed to contain disciplinary actions taken against doctors, nurses, therapists and other health practitioners around the country so that hospitals and select others can run background checks before they hire new employees," the reporters write. "Federal officials discovered the missing reports after a ProPublica investigation in February found widespread gaps in the data, including hundreds of nurses and pharmacists who had been sanctioned for serious wrongdoing."

Since that report, state agencies have submitted 72,000 new records to the database, nearly double the total submitted in all of 2009. ProPublica reports many agencies were simply failing to comply or didn't know they are required to submit the information for the database, administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Congress ordered the government to create a disciplinary-action database more than two decades ago, when information about doctors and dentists was first made available in the National Practitioner Data Bank in 1990, but hospitals could begin searching for other types of professionals only in March 2010.

"Despite the important public safety role of the database, federal officials have little power to enforce compliance," Webster and Ornstein write. "Earlier this month, they took what they said is the strongest action allowed against scofflaws: They put a checkmark next to state names indicating they were 'noncompliant' and posted the information on the HRSA website." In total, 21 states and Puerto Rico were labeled noncompliant for not reporting on at least one category of health professional or for ignoring the government's requests for information. Kentucky was the main scofflaw, failing to report information for 10 professions. Louisiana didn't report six, and Alabama and New Mexico each failed to report five. (Read more)