< Previous page

Burton Craige, a Raleigh medical malpractice plaintiffs lawyer and past president of the trial lawyers academy, said the medical board's changes are a good start.

"But they need to go a lot farther," he said.

Craige is on the board of the Coalition for Patients Rights, a patient advocacy organization established by the trial lawyers that is also pushing for medical board reform. Among other things, the coalition wants the N.C. Medical Board to do as some other states, including Virginia, have done and provide information about licensees' past malpractice payments and disciplinary history, including actions taken by medical boards in other states.

"I don't see any reason we can't do that in North Carolina," Craige said.

Rep. Bill Faison, a Democrat who represents Orange and Caswell counties and is a partner in a firm handling medical malpractice cases, said broader disciplinary powers would be a "dramatic improvement" -- if the board would be aggressive about applying them.

"It's movement in the right direction," he said. "But if they have the option to continue operating as the good old boys club, which they have done up until now, I'm not sure the public has gained any ground."

Not everyone is enamored of the idea of a medical board with sharper teeth.

The N.C. Board of Nursing and the N.C. Board of Pharmacy are preparing to fend off some of the board's proposed changes, specifically one that would authorize the board to use its broadened powers to go after nurse practitioners and clinical practitioner pharmacists.

Mansfield said those types of providers essentially practice medicine and therefore should be subject to the medical board's authority.

Jay Campbell, executive director of the N.C. Board of Pharmacy, noted that existing rules governing clinical practitioner pharmacists already allow the medical board to restrict, deny or terminate such pharmacists ability to direct medication therapy.

"This is a solution in search of a problem," Campbell said.

Polly Johnson, chairwoman of the N.C. Board of Nursing, was similarly nonplused by the medical board's bid. She said nurse practitioners are advanced-practice nurses, not medical doctors. Johnson said the nursing board does just fine monitoring its 123,000 licensees -- about 3,000 of whom are nurse practitioners -- and ordering appropriate punishment when needed.

< Previous page