Physician, Physician Assistant, Nurse Practitioner, and Pharmacist State Board Disciplinary Actions: Cross-sectional...

The objective of this research is to audit, summarize, and analyze state board disciplinary actions reported to the public and the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) in the United States in 2023 for MD, DO, PA, NP, and PharmD health care providers (HCPs).

Researchers extracted disciplinary action data from state board public publications for select HCPs and compared this data to disciplinary actions reported through the NPDB Public Use Data File. Parametric (i.e., analysis of variance and t tests) and nonparametric (i.e., Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon) statistical tests were utilized for data analysis. The primary outcome was an analysis of average disciplinary action rates per 1000 HCPs. Secondary outcomes analyzed included state board publicly reported disciplinary action outcomes and infractions.

Respectively, 3165 and 4037 disciplinary actions were identified from state board publications and the NPDB. PAs and NPs had a lower incurrence of disciplinary actions from state boards when compared with MDs, DOs, and PharmDs. There was significant underreporting of disciplinary actions to the public by MD and PharmD state boards. Of all the ad hoc outcomes and infractions researched, sexual misconduct was the only category with statistically significant differences between HCPs and with applicability for further analysis. Results indicated MDs had a higher incurrence of sexual misconduct disciplinary actions when compared with other HCPs. Significant underreporting of sexual misconduct to the NPDB was identified for MD, DO, PA, NP, and PharmD state boards.

Results of this audit are indicative of a system functioning asynchronously, opaquely, and ineffectively. To better serve the public, all state boards must regularly and publicly report disciplinary actions.