FierceHealthcare reports that a new law passed by the state legislature in North Carolina will require the state’s medical board to make more information available to the public. State medical boards collect some very sensitive information on doctors–and make it available through the National Practitioner Data Bank–but most do not let the public see the data. In North Carolina, however, this will no longer be the case with the passing of this law.
The new law requires the board, which licenses 29,000 N.C. physicians, to publicly disclose physician felony convictions, sanctions by hospitals, malpractice payments and disciplinary actions by other state medical boards. The board will put the information up on its Web site within a few months.