• 03
  • October
    2011

Patients deserve to be treated by their physicians with a basic standard of care. When physicians violate that trust, open themselves up to medical malpractice and may be subject to discipline by the Texas Medical Board.

The Texas Medical Board disciplined 108 physicians at its annual meeting at the end of August. Included in the reprimands were 44 standard-of-care violations, as well as sanctions against two pain management clinics.

As pointed out in a recent post, patients rely of the medical board to discipline doctors when they are unable to bring medical malpractice claims.

Physicians, as well as other medical professionals, may be disciplined for a number of behaviors, from inadequate quality of care, unprofessional conduct, violating a previous sanction, indiscrete drug prescriptions. The medical board may also discipline a doctor in order to recognize actions taken by another state medical board.

Sources said over two dozen doctors in the Houston area were sanctioned for various offenses, including overprescribing medications, ordering and billing for excessive testing, and prescribing dangerous controlled substances to narcotics abusers. A patient of one of the disciplined doctors reportedly died from multi-drug toxicity.

Two pain clinics, which had been run by Dr. Donnie Evans in the Houston area, were both ordered to cease operations. Sources said previous discipline by the Medical Board makes Dr. Evans ineligible to hold pain clinic certificates.

Evans, who reportedly held a pain management certificate for CPR Medical Group, had been barred from holding such a certificate earlier this year in April for inappropriately prescribing, dispensing, administering, supplying or selling a controlled substance. Evans also held a pain management certificate for Holland Medical Group.

Source: chron.com, "Houston pain clinic operations shut down; more doctors disciplined by Texas Medical Board," Sep 9, 2011.