More on reforming the National Practitioner Data Bank in light of Disclosure Movement

Our recent post on reforming the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) has created a lot of discussion, including on LinkedIn.   Immediately below is my response to that discussion, and the link for the entire discussion: "Thanks to everyone for great comments....this is a tricky issue.  There is a greater push for transparency in healthcare.  To this end, I've often argued that the greatest act of transparency is one doctor, one nurse talking with one family about harm that was caused, apologizing, and making amends.  In my opinion, this is a 1000x more valuable than slapping names and data all over the web.  Nonetheless, we must stop the deficient providers from skipping from state to state, which was the original intent of the NPDB.  Trouble is, in my opinion, the NPDB has been broadened beyond this scope without the funds or resources to do the job. So, in re-focusing the NPDB on it's original scope we will truly chase the bad apples while allowing good docs who make honest mistakes to more quickly settles cases and increase the learning."

Here is the link to view the entire discussion: http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1868793&type=member&item=251972469&commentID=146600452&report%2Esuccess=8ULbKyXO6NDvmoK7o030UNOYGZKrvdhBhypZ_w8EpQrrQI-BBjkmxwkEOwBjLE28YyDIxcyEO7_TA_giuRN#commentID_146600452