I found this article about a website where you can check the disciplinary records of physicians. It’s important when choosing a physician to make an informed decision. Physicians may have disciplinary action taken if they have provided incompetent or negligent care, over-prescribed drugs, committed sexual misconduct or if other things, such as substance abuse problems, compromise their ability to provide competent care to their patients.

The Castle Connelly website offers a search facility that will search individual states or all 46 states and the District of Columbia. Four states, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina and South Dakota, are not included.

I ran a few test searches on the website, both in single state and nationwide. Parts of the site seem to still be under construction and a 46-state search only returned an error screen. I was able to perform single state searches, however.

To verify that the information contained on the site is up-to-date, I checked with my state’s Board of Registration in Medicine for the names of physicians who have been disciplined in the last year. I tried several searches on names of physicians that I know have had disciplinary action taken by the board – in one case, a doctor who has had his license to practice medicine revoked by the state board. Unfortunately, in each case, the Castle Connelly search turned up no information regarding any disciplinary action. I decided to try the website of the American Medical Association, which offers a doctor-finder search facility for patients.

The AMA website wasn’t much help either as it didn’t return any information on doctors who are not AMA members. The doctor who had his license revoked apparently was an AMA member and so his name did bring search results, but no mention was made of any disciplinary action and he seemed to be a member in good stead. The AMA doctor finder even provided a link to this physician’s website, in spite of the fact that his license to practice is under complete revocation and has been for four months. The physician in question is an orthopedic surgeon.

The four states not included in the Castle Connelly search facility have their own state-wide physican profile page. In fact, many states do make public the disciplinary and malpractice records of physcians licensed in that state. In most cases these can be easily found by googling “Board of Medicine+your state’s name”. The information found on these pages is usually current and verifiable. If your state doesn’t provide physician profiles online, usually you will be able to contact the state board in charge of licensure and registration of medical doctors by phone. Check your state’s government website for information.

When searching for a specialist or even a new primary care physican, take the time to research your choices and find the best match for your health issues.