As my colleague Maura Lerner reported this week, the state suspended the license of a South St. Paul doctor who admitted having sex with two patients, even infecting one of them with a sexually transmitted disease, which he then treated. Dr. John Beall also prescribed “escalating quantities of narcotics” for one of the patients “without an objective basis for the increased dosages,” according to the Board of Medical Practice’s “Stipulation and Order for Indefinite Suspension.”

The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, the agency that licenses and disciplines doctors, now makes it easier than ever to look up your physician’s priors. Maura had to walk me through the web site, however, to get to the site with the most information.

I started with the list of disciplinary actions. This includes few details on Beall’s suspension, other than a general description of the violations. Much more information is available by searching the professional profile.

In Beall’s case, the professional profile has a link to the actual order, with all the unfortunate details of his transgressions. It also tells where he was trained and where he practiced.

The board launched the searchable professional profile about two years ago, so “consumers can make informed health care decisions,” executive director Robert Leach told me. It’s among the more user-friendly databases of doctor records that Leach has seen.

“We get quite a few hits,” he said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 12:01 pm and is filed under How to blow the whistle, Public records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.