Patients' assumptions concerning the competency of medical practitioners might be, well, just a bit misplaced.

A comprehensive analysis of hospital peer-review outcomes from across the nation over a 20-year period ending in 2009 indicates that, in fact, the doctor that a patient is seeing at a particular hospital might well have had his or her clinical privileges revoked or restricted by that facility and still be practicing without further discipline or penalty.

That goes for many thousands of physicians across the country who were cited for acts of medical malpractice by hospital disciplinary boards, but were able to avoid thereafter any follow-up licensing actions by medical boards in their states.

That problem extends to Ohio, which the non-profit public-interest group Public Citizen has included among its list of states where an eye-opening 50 percent or more of doctors who have received disciplinary reports from hospitals within the testing period did not have a subsequent licensing action taken against them by their applicable state medical board.

Over the period, 10,672 physicians were listed in the National Practitioner Data Bank for having suffered clinical restrictions or revocations. Among that number, though, 5,887 - 55 percent- did not receive any further disciplinary action from state regulators.

Study authors call that outcome "alarming," saying that either the state boards are receiving the information but failing to act upon it or they are not receiving any information at all concerning problem physicians. Either way, notes one of the study overseers, "Something is broken and needs to be fixed."

Public Citizen sees a need to be proactive following its findings, and has sent a copy of the report to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, urging that the agency begin an active investigation into all state medical boards. Public Citizen is also notifying Ohio and the other 32 states that it says have the worst records in disciplining problem doctors.

Related Resource: www.consumeraffairs.com "Study Finds Little Action Taken Against Dangerous Doctors"