Earlier this summer, the state legislature adopted a provision that will make it easier for the Connecticut Medical Examining Board to discipline doctors who have faced license suspension or other disciplinary action in other states.
The legislation was apparently enacted in response to numerous reported instances of doctors who practiced freely in Connecticut, notwithstanding reprimands, censures, probation and even medical license suspension in neighboring states.
One example is an emergency room doctor who had his medical license suspended in Massachusetts followed by five years' probation after the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine found that he had rendered substandard care to four patients while practicing emergency medicine, including failing to prescribe the proper medications, give complete examinations or order the proper tests. Yet this same doctor was able to secure an emergency medicine position at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs, Connecticut.
In another case, the Rhode Island Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline had revoked a physician's license to practice medicine after he was accused of bilking "numerous" patients for Lasik surgery that was never performed. Even as disciplinary proceedings remained pending against him in Rhode Island, the physician relocated his practice to Manchester, Connecticut.
The new law authorizes the Connecticut Department of Public Health to take reciprocal action against the licenses of doctors who have been disciplined in other states, based solely on the "findings and conclusions" made by authorities in those other jurisdictions. This will make Connecticut's medical disciplinary protocol consistent with that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, which automatically impose reciprocal sanctions on physicians against whom Connecticut officials had previously taken disciplinary action.
The new rules are part of a larger package of amendments to public health statutes that will become effective October 1, 2011.
