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DoD Doctors: Sheltered from Litigation

A Reluctance to Report Substandard Care

Federal law prohibits the release military doctors’ records to the public In 1986 Congress passed a law prohibiting the release of any information about the quality of military doctors in spite of the fact that the information on civilian doctors is available from state medical boards. This data, including schools attended by the military’s physician, board certifications, and complaints filed against them, is kept in a military database, board certifications and residency training (Carollo (1997).

In 1990 Congress established the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a database containing all cases of medical malpractice filed against physicians, and designed to allow the public to look up information on a particular physician. When the NPDB was established, the military agreed to report its physicians when a "standard of care" had not been met. However, more than 75 military medical facilities have never reported a doctor for medical malpractice to the NPDB, yet those same facilities were the targets of claims alleging more than 1,000 incidents of medical malpractice (Carollo, 1997).

In 1986, the military required physicians to obtain a state license. They could register in any state and those on active duty had until 1986 to comply. But in 1996, more than 1,100 military doctors, one of every 11, had not obtained a license (Carollo, 1997)