Database To Detail Doctors' Records

District Legislation Requires Reporting Of Malpractice

D.C. patients will someday be able to go online to a city Web site and check their doctors' credentials and experience and whether they have lost malpractice suits or been disciplined.

Under legislation passed by the D.C. Council in its final session this year, District doctors, hospitals and health providers soon will be required to report "adverse medical events" to a centralized database being created by the city medical board, one of several measures that advocates say will help safeguard patients and improve care.

Doctors also will have 60 days to report judgments and settlements arising from malpractice allegations, as well as disciplinary actions imposed in another state. Health care providers will have to do the same for any doctors they employ, and that information, including criminal convictions, will become part of physician profiles the D.C. Board of Medicine plans to put online.

Maryland and Virginia have had such information available online for several years.

The requirements are among the most substantive revisions in more than 20 years to the law governing health occupations. The changes, which were not supported by the District's medical and hospital associations, seek to rectify long-standing criticisms about the board's lack of action against troubled physicians.

"It will take [the law] a light year ahead of where we were," said Health Department administrator Feseha Woldu, who supervises the licensing of health care professionals.

But critics are particularly concerned about its general description of an adverse event as "involving the medical care of a patient by a health care provider that results in death or an unanticipated injury to the patient." They consider it too vague.

"It's absolutely meaningless . . . so poorly defined," said K. Edward Shanbacker, executive vice president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, which opposed the final bill. "Physicians are going to have no idea what to report."

The D.C. Hospital Association withdrew an endorsement because of the adverse reporting requirement.

"We felt that it went too far," said association President Robert Malson. The provision covers individuals and institutions, from psychologists to pharmacists and nursing homes to dialysis centers.

The database must be established by July 1 within the Health Department, which is to analyze the events reported to identify patterns or trends, assist in corrective steps and publish an annual summary. It is unclear when the full catalogue of physician profiles will be available for public view online.

The medical board chairman says all of it will build on progress made since 2005, when a series in The Washington Post brought to a head the frustrations over what D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) called a broken system. The articles reported that the medical board rarely disciplined troubled doctors and did not publicize punitive actions it did take.