Board of Medicine

"True, the Board should move with care and caution before taking away a doctor's primary means of support. However, the Board also must consider the risk to consumers, whose health and very existence could be at stake. If there is doubt, deference should be made to safeguarding the life and limb of patients......
.....The Board's mission is to protect consumers by licensing and regulating doctors and other healthcare providers. This means putting consumers first, not doctors.

Dear Friend and Colleagues:
Attached a Miami Herald editorial regarding a Miami doctor whose legal trouble received wide exposure in the local media.
I personally know the doctor and deeply regret his professional trouble and struggle. I am also a volunteer expert witness for the Florida Department of Health, have attended Board meetings and have no doubt that each and every Board member diligently considers the merits of each and every case that is being presented for review.
The Boards mission is to " protect health care consumers by licensing qualified health providers ..[and] .. establishing and enforcing health care standards.."
Doing so the Board often has to navigate the narrow course between Scylla (the physicians right to privacy and guarantee of due process ) and Charybdis ( the consumers protection).
In this process the Board is often accused to be either too hard or too soft on doctors. I can empathize with Board members who feel that that they are damned if they do, damned if they don't.
We need to support the efforts of the Board by being proactive in regulating OURSELVES and not to ignore or tolerate the wrongdoing of a FEW doctors. We should not shy away from either talking to those doctors or utilizing the established channels of notifying the Board of any behavior that violate the high health standards in our community.
I would prefer proactive self-regulation to legal actions imposed on our profession by third parties.
The choice is ours and the reported case in question could have been addressed and resolved before hitting the headlines of a local news paper.
Lets remember that each of us or our family members are healthcare consumers too and may have been or will be harmed by actions or inactions of a fellow doctor who does not abide to the same health care standards that we do. Would we keep our mouth shut? I don't think so. Therefore we should learn from this tragic case in question and draw our own conclusions on how to act in the future.
Yours
Bernd




Posted on Fri, Mar. 21, 2008
Troubled doctor puts patients at risk
It is hard to understand why Miami doctor Alex Zakharia, after facing a string of legal and professional setbacks, still has approval from the state of Florida to practice medicine. Dr. Zakharia, 70, has admitted to suffering memory problems and possible strokes. He has pleaded guilty to lying about his credentials as a heart surgeon and was suspended by a Miami hospital after several of his patients died.

Yet the state Board of Medicine says Dr. Zakharia's license is still good and lists his status as ''clear/active'' on its website.

Dr. Zakharia's travails have been chronicled in news stories for more than a year, and the Board is expected to issue a final order on his status next month. Still, the Board's handling of the case raises the question of whose interest takes precedence, a troubled doctor's or the well-being of unsuspecting healthcare consumers.

When asked about Dr. Zakharia's well-documented troubles, Department of Health spokeswoman Eulinda Jackson told Miami Herald reporter John Dorschner that the Board must follow due process. ''That's the way it works, and for good reason,'' she said.

True, the Board should move with care and caution before taking away a doctor's primary means of support. However, the Board also must consider the risk to consumers, whose health and very existence could be at stake. If there is doubt, deference should be made to safeguarding the life and limb of patients.

In this case, the Board had every reason to be aware of Zakharia's troubles, including his legal problems, and could have issued an emergency suspension. A nurse who worked with the doctor said she complained and sent copies of Miami Herald stories about the doctor's problem to the Board.

Regulating doctors

Florida voters wanted to make sure patients' rights are protected when they passed a constitutional amendment in 2004 that allows disclosure to patients about ''adverse medical events'' in hospitals. The amendment had been tied up in court since passage, but the Florida Supreme Court recently settled matters by affirming that patients have a right to know about mistakes made by doctors and hospitals.

The Board's mission is to protect consumers by licensing and regulating doctors and other healthcare providers. This means putting consumers first, not doctors.