By JACK DOLAN and MIKE McINTIRE
The Hartford Courant
May 05, 2000

A Republican congressman pledged Thursday to renew his efforts to open a secret government database that lists malpractice payments and other actions against doctors, and Vice President Al Gore gave the idea qualified support.

Also Thursday, the federal official in charge of the database, the National Practitioner Data Bank, said the fact that many doctors with records of serious malpractice problems are still practicing means hospitals and state regulators aren't paying enough attention to the information.

The Courant reported Sunday and Monday that hospitals and HMOs can access the data bank to check on problem doctors, but that the information is kept secret from patients. Of the eight doctors identified by The Courant as having the worst records, four are still practicing.

During a question-and-answer session with health care journalists in Chicago Thursday, Gore recalled debating the 1986 bill that created the data bank while serving in the U.S. Senate. He said he believed at the time that the information contained in the data bank would be valuable to patients.

My natural inclination is to make it available to the public,'' Gore said. It is my understanding that we set out to make it available to everybody, and at some point it was cut back.''

He said he wanted to study the issue further before fully committing to opening it.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Commerce Committee, Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-Va., intends to draft a bill that would open the data bank to the public by the end of the current Congress, a spokesman said.

This is such a common sense issue,'' said Steve Schmidt, the spokesman. Outside the beltway, 99.9 percent of the public supports opening this thing up so people can make their own decisions about their doctor, but inside the beltway it's controversial because the AMA gets apoplectic every time someone mentions opening the data bank.''

A spokesman for the AMA on Thursday repeated the association's position that malpractice payments are not a fair measure of a doctor's competence, and that the data bank should not be opened to the public.

Bliley was the driving force behind congressional hearings earlier this year that featured testimony from malpractice victims, who said they believed access to the data bank may have saved them from being victimized by incompetent doctors. It is at least the third attempt to lift the veil of secrecy that has shielded the data bank since it began collecting information on physicians in 1990.

Under current law, it's a federal offense to share with patients the information contained in the data bank, which as of January contained 228,000 reports of disciplinary actions and malpractice payments totaling $25 billion, affecting one of every six physicians in the country. Only hospital officials, HMOs and state regulators can access it.

Earlier this week, The Courant reported that it had identified doctors with the worst data bank records in the country, and that many of them were still practicing. The newspaper identified the physicians by matching data contained in a stripped down, public use'' version of the data bank to court records, state regulatory files and other public information.

Among the doctors identified by The Courant was Houston surgeon Eric Sheffey, known among some colleagues as Eric the Red'' because of allegations that his patients' tended to bleed heavily. He is still practicing despite having 40 reports in his data bank file and making $8.5 million in malpractice payments.

Others included ophthalmologist Gary Hall, the son-in-law of convicted savings and loan operator Charles H. Keating Jr., who is still practicing with 27 reports and $5.3 million in payments, and Melvyn Rosenstein, the California urologist who reattached John Wayne Bobbitt's severed penis in 1993. Rosenstein, who surrendered his license, has 233 reports on file and has made $6.4 million in payments.

Tom Croft, head of the federal agency that administers the data bank, said the fact that doctors with such extensive licenses are still practicing suggests that the information in the data bank may not carrying the weight it should with state licensing boards.

What bothers me is that there isn't more activity on the part of boards and hospitals who have this information and don't take action,'' said Croft, director of the Division of Quality Assurance in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Agency officials are barred from alerting a state board or a hospital when they notice a doctor with an extraordinary number of reports in the data bank, Croft said.

We don't have the authority to be proactive on following up on individual practitioners like that,'' Croft said.
In an effort to encourage local boards and hospitals to keep a closer eye on the data bank, Croft said his agency will publish a study of the doctors with the most reports in the data bank sometime next year. The study won't disclose the doctor's names, but it will say where they are practicing if their license has not been revoked.

Courant Staff Writer Eric Weiss contributed to this story.