It might be easier to reform the post office than state medical boards. In the case of the post office, a parallel organization, FedEx, was started instead. To protect patients it probably makes sense to do the same and form a new organization. Licensing agencies like medical boards protect healthcare professionals, not patients. Starting a State Patients Board with injured patients on the board of directors with the authorization to investigate complaints, look at records, and question witnesses would help to protect patients.

State medical boards are run by and for healthcare professionals. They feel a personal and professional kinship with each other and do things like lobby for limitations on their liabilities rather than for measures to make patients safe. Their complaint and investigation departments serve to placate, if not defeat, patients rather than to help them. The work they will never do to protect patients needs to be done by someone else, someone who understands and is on the side of injured patients.

Any thoughts?

http://medicalboardreform.tribe.net