Post Online, Get Investigated By State Medical Board

Earlier this month, a survey of state medical boards published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that many state medical boards were willing to investigate physicians for lack of online “professionalism.” The authors of this study created 10 vignettes regarding online physician behavior and then queried state medical boards regarding their likelihood of “investigating” physicians based upon the scenarios. Percentages of state medical boards that were “likely” or “very likely” to investigate a physicians for behaviors were as follows: Citing misleading information about clinical outcomes — 81% Using patient images without consent — 79% Misrepresenting credentials — 77% Inappropriately contacting patients — 77% Online posts depicting alcohol intoxication — 73% Violating patient confidentiality — 65% Using discriminatory speech — 60% Using derogatory speech toward patients — 46% Online posts depicting alcohol use without intoxication — 40% Providing clinical narratives without violation of confidentiality — 16% Think about the implication of some of these circumstances. It takes 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, 2-6 years of residency, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses in order to obtain a medical license. Based on this article, there is theoretically the potential for a medical board to take away 10-16 years of work because a physician ...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Medical-Legal Source Type: blogs