How broad are state physician health program descriptions of physician impairment?

My latest piece with co-author and Georgetown law student Nick Lawson is here.

All credit for this piece is due to Nick who conceived of the idea and ran with it.  Physician health programs (PHPs) are unknown to most physicians until they have been referred to one.  At that point, if a physician registers any concerns about the fairness of the PHP process that physician is generally seen as merely belly-aching or being in denial instead of having anything legitimate to say.

As I have written previously, PHPs have bidirectional financial conflicts of interest with the evaluation and treatment centers that they often refer people to.    Additionally, the centers themselves–which charge thousands of dollars for evaluations that could easily happen in outpatient facilities or at academic medical centers for a fraction of the cost and minimal hassle–often decide people need to stay for treatments of various sorts at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars.  Why don’t PHPs routinely refer folks to academic medical centers for evaluation?  And, as we ask in our piece here, why are their criteria so broad?

 

 

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