Medical Disorder, Part 1
Bad doctors who cross the border can hide their dirty
secrets. We dug them up
An
unprecedented Star investigation reveals how doctors criss-cross the
Canada-U.S. border while a broken system keeps secret the records of their
crimes, malpractice and disciplinary rulings.
Data Analysis by Andrew Bailey
Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then demand of them an undeserved fee for such services. - Heraclitus
Doctors crossing
borders
These figures likely represent a fraction the actual number of doctors
who've practiced both in Canada and the U.S. Compiled by the Canadian Institute
for Health Information based on changes to mailing addresses of active
physicians since the 1990s.
Sixty-four medical regulators in
Canada and the U.S. oversee nearly one million medical doctors. Their common
mission is to protect the public. They each have their own policies, laws and
languages that shape how this is done.
Some regulators say they have a full
picture of the disciplinary, criminal and malpractice histories of these mobile
doctors — everything they need to protect patients.
“The process is as seamless as it
can be,” said Dan Faulkner, interim registrar of the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).
But how much of that information is
made public is another matter.
Dan Faulkner, interim registrar for
the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, said a national registry is
“a great policy idea,” but is not a priority. Anne-Marie Jackson/Toronto Star
“As a member of the public, I’d love
to press a button and get all of this information available to me. But we have
laws that are different in every province and jurisdiction,” Faulkner said.
“We’ve made some very careful decisions about how we’re going to provide
credible and relevant high-quality information to the public.”
A Toronto Star investigation reveals
that Canadian medical watchdogs keep secret the vast majority of cross-border
doctors’ disciplinary histories.
The Star spent 18 months reviewing
thousands of pages of doctors’ public disciplinary records to verify those who
have been licensed to work on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. We used
these records, as well as interviews with physicians and regulators, to create
the first comprehensive database that follows disciplined doctors — 159 of them
— throughout their careers across state, provincial and country lines.
The Star’s analyses of these records
show that almost half of the 159 doctors who were found guilty of professional
misconduct in one place went on to commit a second violation that resulted in
discipline. We found that 90 per cent of these doctors’ public profiles in
Canada failed to report the breadth of sanctions taken against them.
The range of offences captured in
the Star’s database includes: incompetence,
improper prescribing, sexual
misconduct, substance abuse and fraud. Nearly all of the disciplined doctors we
identified are male and more than half are Canadian-educated.
In 45 cases,
these are doctors — including Konasiewicz and Lemire — who have been disciplined
in the U.S. and who currently hold an active Canadian licence. Thirty-four of
159 doctors we examined had criminal records: 13 of them were convicted in the
United States and later kept or were granted a Canadian medical licence.
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