Consumers, Complaints, and Professional Discipline: A Look at Medical Licensure Boards
State medical licensure boards are widely, if dimly, perceived as the keepers of the gate of the medical profession. When patients or their advocates are aggrieved by physicians, they sometimes turn to medical boards for help. Medical boards respond, though not always in ways that are perceived, or appreciated, or effective. Who complains to boards, what they want, and how boards respond are issues until now little understood. If boards are to carry out their job effectively, more needs to be known about what that job is, and about how best it should be carried on. This study is an initial contribution to the understanding of these issues.
Timothy S. Jost, Linda Mulcahy, Stephen Strasser, and Larry A. Sachs