As recently as the late 1960s, most licensure boards were composed of individuals appointed or nominated by medical societies. Only slowly did judicial supervision and legislative control transform licensure boards into public entities, but the shift has barely changed the effeicacy of the oversight by medical licensure boards. From 1963 to 1967, fewer than 200 licenses were suspended across the United States. Although today the number of disciplinary actions has increased to 3,000 each year (among nearly 600,000 medical doctors), fewer than 10 percent of these are for poor-quality care…The last decade has seen little improvement in the disciplining of physicians. Many tort reform measures enacted in the mid-1980s awarded new powers to boards of registration and other licensure boards. Unfortunately, legislatures often failed to provide them with the funds necessary to exert their new power.
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