Nov. 09--A database of doctor discipline and malpractice records blocked by the Obama administration in September was made public again today with new restrictions for anyone who wants to use it.
Before downloading the public file of the National Practitioner Data Bank maintained by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, users must agree not to identify individual doctors and to delete or return any data at the request of the government agency.
The Data Bank is a record of malpractice and discipline records intended for hospitals to check doctors' backgrounds. The public file of the data was stripped of doctors' names but has been used for years by reporters and researchers to analyze trends and identify problem doctors by cross-referencing with court and medical board records.
Charles Ornstein, president of the Columbia, Mo.-based Association of Health Care Journalists, called the restrictions on the public database "unworkable."
"How can the government say data is public but then say it's only public with strings attached?" Ornstein said in a statement. "I am troubled that HRSA is overstepping its legal authority with these new rules and may be imposing unconstitutional prior restraints on reporters."
The Obama administration pulled the file Sept. 1 following complaints from one doctor about a Kansas City Star investigation of physicians with extensive malpractice histories who had not been disciplined by medical boards in Kansas or Missouri. Kansas neurosurgeon Robert Tenny, who the Star reported has been sued for malpractice at least 16 times, wrote six letters to the health administration after being contacted by a reporter.
The Post-Dispatch also used the public file last year to investigate the lax and secret system of doctor discipline in Missouri. The investigation inspired a new law that gives the state healing arts board more power and gives patients more information about their doctors.
The Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors and other journalism and open government groups protested the removal of the database and pressured the administration to restore it. An earlier version of the database is still available on IRE's website.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) condemned the government's withdrawal and subsequent restriction of public information.
"HRSA is overreaching and interpreting the law in a way that restricts the use of the information much more than the law specifies," Grassley said in a statement today. "Nowhere in the law does it say a reporter can't use the data in the public use file to combine that with other sources and potentially identify doctors who have been disciplined in their practice of medicine. This agency needs to remember that half of all health care dollars in the United States comes from taxpayers, so the interpretation of the law ought to be for public benefit."
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