Fifteen years ago, Georgia lawmakers gave patients across the state the right to know whether their doctor had malpractice insurance coverage.
The legislation required that information be included on the profile of every licensed physician on the Georgia Composite Medical Board’s website, expanding on a law that allows patients to check on the credentials of the doctors they are seeing — or considering — for their care.
Only recently, though, after the board upgraded its website, did the malpractice insurance information start appearing on physician profiles instead of on a separate, hard-to-navigate document.
Yet now most of the information on malpractice coverage appears to be wrong.
Information on malpractice payouts, also required, often appears to be missing or inaccurate, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.
Details on doctors’ board certifications also can be widely inaccurate. Other information required by Georgia’s 2001 Patient Right to Know Act, such as felony criminal convictions and restrictions on hospital privileges, is nowhere to be found.
Even the most critical part of the board’s disclosures — whether the medical board has disciplined a physician and for what — is not reliably reported, the AJC found.
At a time when federal health officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., advise Americans to do their own research as they face a bewildering assortment of claims about medical treatments, the errors and omissions leave patients with no reliable Georgia source of information to check the credentials of the doctors they entrust with their lives.
On its website, the board itself urges Georgians to be responsible when selecting a medical provider by reviewing information it provides, said Liz Coyle, the executive director of Georgia Watch, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization.
“Obviously, that’s critically important, and yet, from your own reporting, consumers who go to the medical board to try to do their homework to make an informed decision, are encountering insufficient information and, in some cases, false information,” Coyle said.
Some of the issues were long-standing: A blistering state audit released in 2020 called out the board for failing to provide consumers with the required information in a useful format. Other problems came about as the medical board last summer switched to a new website.
The switch has improved the efficiency of the licensing and renewal process, with the average time to issue a physician’s license dropping from about five months to less than two months. But the transition is continuing to create problems with profile information, the board’s leadership acknowledged.
“We want to make this right, and we want to get it right for you all and the public …,” Jason Jones, the board’s executive director, told the AJC. “It’s just going to take us a little bit longer.”
Important role
Under the Patient Right to Know Act, physician profiles are required to provide the public with comprehensive information about each doctor related to licensing, medical school attendance, graduate medical education and specialty board certification. The law also requires information about hospital privileges, the location of the practice and whether the doctor participates in Medicaid.
The law says the profiles must include information on any disciplinary actions or criminal convictions for felonies and report if a doctor loses hospital privileges.
State law also requires that medical malpractice settlements or court judgments be listed if the amounts reach certain thresholds.
Doctors are required to self-report much of the information.
To check the accuracy of profile information, the AJC checked key details on dozens of doctors. That review found information about physician specialties was flawed.
In numerous cases, profiles showed that doctors were not certified in their specialties, but the American Board of Medical Specialties showed that they were.
Some physicians were listed as having had no public disciplinary orders, but orders are posted on their profile. In other cases, no disciplinary orders were posted for physicians shown to have been sanctioned.
To check information on malpractice payouts, the AJC compared some listed information with findings from court cases and news reports. That review found examples where payout information was missing or inaccurate on the website.
The profile information is vital, according to experts.
“One of the most important roles state medical boards play is serving as a repository of publicly available information about physicians,” the Federation of State Medical Boards, an advocacy organization for state boards, says on its website.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Jones, the Georgia medical board’s executive director since 2024, said he wants to make sure that all the information that is supposed to be on board profiles is added. He acknowledged that things may have been missed in the transition to the new website and that there were issues with having accurate information available to include on each physician’s profile.
“We have some things to improve on,” Jones said. “We’re trying every day …”
“The public should be aware of this stuff, and if we’re supposed to provide that, we should make it accessible. And if we can’t make it accessible, why not?” he said. “… We need to find a way to do it.”
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