Newspaper: Laws nationwide put patients at risk of abuse

ATLANTA (AP) — A 50-state examination by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that only one — Delaware — has anything close to a comprehensive set of laws protecting patients from doctors who commit acts of sexual abuse.

“Instead of looking out for victims or possible victims or protecting our society, we’re protecting doctors,” said Rep. Kimberly Williams, a member of the Delaware General Assembly who sponsored a patient-protection bill last year.

As part of its ongoing “Doctors & Sex Abuse” series, the AJC studied five categories of laws in every state to determine the best and worst at shielding patients from sexually abusive doctors (https://doctors.ajc.com/states/).

Not a single state met the highest bar in every category the newspaper examined, although Delaware came the closest. Meanwhile, in 49 states and the District of Columbia, multiple gaps in laws can leave patients vulnerable to abusive physicians, according to the newspaper.

Trailing the nation, with scores below 50 out of 100 points in the AJC’s study, are Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

Among the AJC’s findings:

oIn Minnesota, state law affords zero tolerance for doctors who are convicted of felony sex offenses: They are banned from practicing medicine. In 36 other states, no such ban exists.

oIn Iowa, state law says women get half the seats on the board that licenses and disciplines physicians. But in most states, men control medical boards, and only half the states give consumers a strong voice in deciding whether doctors who have hurt patients should be allowed to stay in practice.

oIn Texas, state law demands that doctors undergo rigorous criminal background checks before they’re licensed and while they’re practicing. But 14 states still do not require criminal checks before giving a license to someone who can prescribe powerful drugs and ask patients to strip down and submit to being touched, the newspaper found.

In July, the AJC reported that physician sexual misconduct is more common than previously acknowledged and that doctors who violate patients are often allowed to stay in practice. The investigation identified more than 2,400 doctors disciplined for sexual misconduct involving patients since 1999. Half were still licensed.

California requires that doctors who become felony-level registered sex offenders lose their license.

The law grew out of the experiences Rudy Bermudez had while he was a member of California’s medical board.

A former parole officer who had supervised sex offenders, Bermudez said he disagreed repeatedly with physicians on the board who re-licensed doctors who had molested patients.

When Bermudez was later elected to the Legislature, he sponsored and won passage of his bill to ban sex offender doctors from practice.

“I wasn’t going to have it anymore,” Bermudez said. “I was tired of watching these cases go through.”

Delaware has some of the nation’s strongest patient-protection laws, including the one that covers therapists. Rep. Williams pushed last year to take criminalization to that next step when she introduced a bill to make doctor-patient sexual contact a felony. A veto by Gov. Jack Markell killed the bill.

Too often, Williams said, bad doctors are given a pass. Now, instead of waiting for 50 states to enact laws to protect patients, Williams thinks the federal government should step in.

“As a society, we don’t take sexual misconduct, sexual assault and sexual abuse seriously enough,” Williams said. “These are bad, bad crimes they are committing on people and we do not treat them that way.”