Maryland Physician alert: ten facts to know about licensing

Maryland Physician Alert: Ten facts to know about licensing

Maryland Board of Physicians has relegated its flock to a level of subservience few would have expected while earning their degrees. Independence is no longer accepted when physicians decide on diagnostic and therapeutic modes. Instead 21 people 8 of whom are not doctors, the Board, will tell you what is allowed under the aegis of their governance. Deviate from their mindset and your license could be in jeopardy. Does this sound absurd? When a physician’s work product comes under scrutiny the Board will engage hired guns to affirm their fabricated standards of care. These gunslingers do not need to be in the exact specialty of the physician being reviewed. Worse, a level of junk science now interplays in Board licensing decisions that have a stench of political overtones.  The covenant between patient and physician is interspersed with political and 3^rd party controls whose underpinnings bring the provider into a form of indentured servitude. Essentially the physician is held responsible for the work product and the outcome though someone else controls the path that connects the two.

The Maryland Board of Physicians has no book of standards or protocols for physicians to refer in the event questions of medical care arise. When questions of borderline medical services come to their attention nurses and lawyers not physicians are the mainstay of their review capacity. Physicians are brought in later to rubberstamp their decisions. Recent cases brought to Administrative Hearings had more pomp and publicity than substance. With the Circuit and Appellate Courts in their back pockets, no matter what decision the Board makes, it is upheld by these judicial domains. Review the last ten decisions by the Court of Special Appeals. When the law is in the favor of the physician the Court still affirms the Medical Board decision. In event a physician decides to practice in the Free State there are 33,000 very hungry lawyers, especially those in the Attorney General’s Office, who will roast them if given the chance. High malpractice premiums, a soviet style medical board, backbiting colleagues, a tax system with no mercy, a court system that has an unwelcome mat out for physicians and every conceivable mechanism to make medical practice difficult is embodied in the environment called Maryland. Those who practice in elite hospitals and university settings will not be spared the wrath of a medical board that knows no boundaries. Before signing on the dotted line put aside several hundred thousand dollars because the medical cannibals are waiting in the wings. Mark Davis MD, author of Demons of Democracy. platomd@gmail.com