In the mid-1980s, incompetent and negligent doctors were moving freely between states, with state licensing boards and hospitals largely oblivious to lawsuits or disciplinary actions in other locations that might have flagged bad providers.
In response, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, which created the National Practitioner Data Bank, a repository of information that includes malpractice payments, license revocations and loss of clinical privileges for physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other professionals . “The NPDB is primarily an alert or flagging system intended to facilitate a comprehensive review of health care practitioners’ professional credentials,” says the Department of Health and Human Services, which maintains it.Continue reading…
