Physician with long history of misconduct finally caught by authorities
If you’re a reader of the Credentialing Resource Center Connection email newsletter, then you know about the case of a doctor with a checkered past who was finally caught by authorities. His case raises a question similar to the ones raised by the famous Kadlec and Swango cases: Does fear of disclosing too much information and risking a lawsuit cause medical staffs to disclose too little information, thus risking the safety of future patients?
Despite being fired from three hospitals, Michael Roy Sharpe, MD, was never disciplined by a state medical board. He worked in a series of hospitals in Tennessee and Alabama, until recently when accusations of having sex with a 15 year-old patient led him to voluntarily give up his medical license, according to an October 12 Tennessean.com article.
Now, he’s been officially charged with raping that patient, and five more young people have given statements about alleged misconduct, too, according to an October 23 Times-Gazette article.
Citing confidentiality rules, Tennessee health officials declined to comment on any investigations they may have conducted about Sharpe. However, Alabama medical licensing officials said Sharpe’s hospital firings weren’t listed in a federal physician databank (newspaper reports didn’t specify which databank).
It’s a scenario that happens when medical staffs don’t carry out a thorough disciplinary process, Ilene Corina, founder of PULSE New York, a patient advocacy group, told the Tennessean.com. “It is too much trouble to go through the discipline process and I am pretty sure that like in many jobs, [doctors] are asked to resign quietly and give up their license, giving them the opportunity to get licensed in another state,” she was quoted in the article as saying.
As an MSP, what’s your reaction to cases like these? Do you think that the public can’t pass judgment on the non-disclosures of Sharpe’s previous employers because there might not have been enough evidence for the hospital to act? Do you think the NPDB reporting rules should be changed so that hospitals can submit more information on behaviors that raise red flags?
Share your thoughts in the comment boxes below.
About the Author: Emily Berry is an associate editor at HCPro in the credentialing market. In addition to managing information on CRC she writes the Briefings on Credentialing newsletter and the Credentialing Resource Center Connection weekly email newsletter. A native of Ohio, she graduated from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland before moving east to attain her MS degree in journalism from Boston University.
Mary | Nov 13, 2009 | Reply
If the hospitals have enough evidence to fire or ask the physician to resign, then they certainly have enough evidence to report the physician to their State’s medical licensing board AND they have a legal and moral obligation to do so! As a former employee of a State licensing board myself, this subject raises my ire. I’ve seen the harm these physicians do, from child-molesting pediatricians to surgeons that mutilate, cripple, blind and kill their patients! Most of these incidents could have been prevented if hospitals had reported their findings and concerns to the medical board.
Anne Roberts | Dec 2, 2009 | Reply
The phrase “being fired from 3 hospitals” is unclear to me. A hospital would only ‘fire’ a physician if they were indeed employed by the hospital. If the physician only held membership & privileges as a member of the medical staff, they are not “fired” – only certain disciplinary action is reportable and without further information regarding what actually occurred at each hospital, one can not speculate whether the hospitals failed to report as required. Hospital’s should also be held accountable if they do fail to report. However, I also think reporting should be required for all employee’s and staff, not just physicians.
G. V. Swan MD | Dec 4, 2009 | Reply
Anne Roberts’ comment is to the point, but raises a more important overall issue. In our hospital, the majority of physicians are employed by the hospital. It is so much easier to get rid of a physician whose conduct or professional performance is sub-standard by simply terminating their employment. While that may be legal, bypassing the Medical Staff credentialing and disciplinary processes means that the physician will never be reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank or the State Board of Medicine. Thus hospitals down the line will need to dig more deeply to find out the “dirt” on an applicant. What do you do with the bare bones replies we get these days, which only list the start and end dates of the employment? The reasons that the hospital uses the employment termination method (“firing”) are that the medical Staff process is too slow, cumbersome, expensive, unreliable, and inefficient, and that the firing method reduces the hospital’s exposure to law suits.
Emily Berry | Dec 4, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for everyone’s great comments on this post. A question that a few of you have raised is the use of the word “fired.” I used that word because that’s the word used in the newspaper accounts I’ve read about this case. Sometimes the blog posts contain original reporting, where I’ve contacted the source directly to uncover the facts. Other blog posts—such as this one—summarize news stories from around the internet, and I link to the original source of the story. In these cases, I trust that the original source interpreted the facts correctly. However, it is possible that some of the details of the case got lost in translation between the medical staff world with its specific terminology and the general language used in newspaper accounts. In any case, it certainly got everyone thinking about the reporting differences between employed physicians and non-employed physicians.
Anne Roberts | Dec 11, 2009 | Reply
It is unfortunate that hospitals that employ physicians and have the ability to terminate that employment for cause are not required to report that to the NPDB or State Board. Our hospital does not accept a general response that does not answer the question regarding whether the practitioner has had any prior disciplinary or quality issues. If a generic response is received, we send it back and ask them to answer at a minimum that specific question to confirm that there has not been any disciplinary or quality concerns. If the hospital refuses to answer the question then we put the responsibility back on the applicant and their application is deemed incomplete until we receive the information.
Likewise, our verification letters that we send to other hospitals includes a statement that there has not been any disciplinary or quality concerns. For those physicians that have indeed had disciplinary or quality concerns that are considered reportable actions we send a separate letter. We draft language that we determine appropriate to disclose, have the legal department approve the language and that is what we use for all verification requests that we receive for that doctor.
However, I recently received a request from a hospital that specifically asked “Within the past 2 years has this MD had any disciplinary or….” – the answer to their question was No, because in the past 2 years, that particular physician had not had any disciplinary action – it had occurred greater than 2 year ago. Hospitals may want to reconsider specifying a time frame when asking if a physician has had disciplinary action – if the disciplinary action occurred 3 years ago or 5 years ago, we would not have disclosed it as the information was not requested and we are not going to disclose something that was not requested.
Anne
CV | Dec 18, 2009 | Reply
I believe the author got a very a personal view of the dangers of relying on a source and not verifying the facts. This is what MSSP’s are faced with every day. Whether planned by the author or not, this in itself drove the point home.