Now that three lawmakers, including State Senator Melissa Hurtado, have introduced bills to increase the Medical Board of California’s accountability to patients, and the medical board itself appealed to legislators to expand its disciplinary power, the agency will soon be the subject of oversight hearings in the State Senate.
On the docket at the hearings is a suite of reforms the board itself proposed in January. Among other changes, the11-page letter to the legislature from the board’s president and vice president requests a longer waiting period before a doctor can reinstate a revoked or surrendered license, an increase in physicians’ licensing fees, and a lower burden of proof for disciplining doctors.
“In order to successfully prosecute a physician for unprofessional conduct, California case law currently requires the Board to meet a higher burden of proof than most other jurisdictions throughout the nation. As a result, investigations in this state are needlessly more time consuming and costly,” reads the letter. It also reveals that the medical board is severely underfunded, especially after a bill introduced last year that would have increased physicians’ licensing and renewal fees failed. “As a result, the Board still faces an annual budget deficit and a rapidly depleting reserve fund,” the letter continues.
The Senate hearings were originally scheduled for February 25 and March 2, but have been postponed “to ensure the maximum amount of time to discuss the Medical Board of California’s processes and the Board’s recent proposals presented to the Legislature,” according to a representative of Senator Richard D. Roth. He chairs the Senate Standing Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development, which runs the oversight hearings.
The medical board has been the subject of heightened public scrutiny of late, following media reports of doctors being given multiple chances to keep their licenses despite harming patients, as well as a Los Angeles Times investigation last fall thatdemonstrated that the medical board protects negligent doctors.
Earlier this month, Senator Melissa Hurtado introduced Senate Bill 920 to increase the transparency of the medical board to patients and the public. The Patient Transparency and Protection Act, as it’s known, would improve medical board investigators’ access to medical and pharmacy records and would allow patient statements to be included in the decision-making process. “I don’t think that it’s the intention of the board to hurt patients, but I think that the process is not working for people,” Hurtado said..
As of now, Hurtado says, patients typically don’t get the opportunity to speak during disciplinary hearings or otherwise contribute to investigations into physician conduct, even when patient complaints are what initially sparked the investigation. “We want to make sure that there’s a clear and transparent process for patients to be able to express themselves and why they’re there in the first place,” she said.
Hurtado says her interest in the medical board was in part inspired by the case of Dr. Arthur Park, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Bakersfield. He surrendered his license in December in the midst of a medical board investigation,but had been allowed to keep practicing for 20 years before that despite two previous medical board investigations and multiple documented patient deaths while in his care.
During a sunset review hearing about the medical board in March 2021, Hurtado spent more than 20 minutes probing the agency’s investigative process and inquiring as to why patients and consumers don’t have the ability to appeal medical board decisions. “Isn’t this board about patient protection?” Hurtado asked Jenna Jones, the board’s chief of enforcement. “Yes, ma’am,” was Jones’s answer.
Medical board accountability is also the subject of two other bills introduced this calendar year: Assembly Bill 1636, introduced by Assemblymember Dr. Akilah Weber, which would refuse medical licenses to doctors convicted of sexually abusing patients; and AB 2060, introduced by Assemblymember Bill Quirk, which would transform the Board’s makeup from a physician majority to a public member majority.