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Medical License Lookup

A work in progress... Last edited on Mar-22-2008

Check your doctor's current medical license status. Free!  Other websites charge money for this, which is strange, since the government provides the data using our tax dollars.

Every location is different. So far, we rank Massachusetts, USA and Ontario, Canada as having the best online resources. In our opinion, Saskatchewan, Canada and Arkansas, USA are the worst. (It should be noted that Puerto Rico appears to have no online resource.) Help put your location here. How would you rate your location? Let us know.

Alabama

Alabama Board of Medical Examiners

Alaska

Alaska Occupational Licensing

Alberta

The College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta

Arizona

Arizona Medical Board

Arkansas

edited Feb-7-2008 after a visitor sent us an email tip

Arkansas State Medical Board [ www.armedicalboard.org ]

The good:

• You can verify the current address, license number, and board specialty for Arkansas doctors online using a simple search by last name.

The bad:

• There is no way to see online if the practitioner has disciplinary actions on record. To do so, be prepared to do a little work. From their website on 2/7/2008:
  

  ---

  There are two methods available to determine whether a practitioner has ever had disciplinary action taken against his license by the Arkansas State Medical Board. 1. You can send a written request to our office for a detailed verification of the practitioner's Arkansas license.  You need to include the practitioner's full name in your request. 2. You can contact our office to schedule an appointment to view the practitioner's licensure file. Our address and telephone number are: Arkansas State Medical Board 2100 Riverfront Drive Little Rock, AR  72202 (501) 296-1802

  ---

  In our opinion, this requirement means either:

  1. Arkansas is very slow to get into the modern, online information age.

  OR

  2. Arkansas is deliberately making it difficult to find information about its doctors.

British Columbia

DoctorScorecard rating: 8 out of 10

website: www.cpsbc.ca (College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia)

From the site: "If a physician has been the subject of disciplinary action by the College of Physicians & Surgeons of British Columbia since January 1998, that will be noted in the individual physician's profile."

California

DoctorScorecard rating: 5 out of 10

www.mbc.ca.gov - Medical Board of California - Site does not allow easy, open access to data. Their links are designed so they are difficult to access elsewhere on the web. Must visit their site to access their database. Site tells you which doctors have revoked licenses but doesn't tell you specifically why the license was revoked.

From their website on Jan-06-2007:

Under California law, the following information is confidential and NOT public and would NOT appear on a record if applicable to the physician: * Complaints made to the Medical Board of California * Investigations conducted by the Medical Board of California * Misdemeanor convictions reported to the Medical Board of California * Some medical malpractice information, e.g., pending or dismissed cases. This information may be available at the local county courthouse in the "Civil Index."

Is this policy good for people seeking qualified medical professionals in California?

Dental Board of California's website: www.dbc.ca.gov

Colorado

Colorado Division of Registrations

Connecticut

Connecticut State DPH

Delaware

Delaware Division of Professional Regulation online license verification service

Florida

DoctorScorecard rating: 9 out of 10 (Good)

1. Search by name, specialty, or license # .. Check physician profile


2. Check insurance liability claims in Florida. (link found by trucken39)
   
   Here is a sample report that you could find: (This is an actual report for one of the doctors reviewed at DoctorScorecard.)
   
   
   
   Steps to check a doctor in Florida:
   • Go to insurance liability claims (opens in new window)
   • Scroll down and click on a dark, blue button labeled "Search Now"
   • Click on "Medical Professional Liability (MPL) Reporting Claims..."
   • A very lengthy form comes up. Do not feel intimidated. All you have to enter is the doctor's last name in the middle of the form.
   • Click the Search button at the bottom of the page.
   • If you see no results, that's a good sign.
   
   
   
3. Another search tool: Check status of medical license for a doctor.

Sites do not allow easy, open access to data. Links are designed so they are difficult to share elsewhere on the web. Must visit their site to access their database. On the plus side, there are interesting details provided, as shown above.

Georgia

Composite State Board of Medical Examiners: Search Licensee Database

Illinois

State of Illinois | Division of Professional Regulation License Look Up

www.idfpr.com

Illinois' website does not show the doctor's business address.

Indiana

Indiana Online Licensing

Kansas

DoctorScorecard rating: 8 out of 10 (Good)

Kansas Board of Healing Arts: www.docboard.org

The good: Their site allows you to search by doctor's name, town name, or license number.

The bad: Site does not allow easy, open access to data. Their links are designed so they are difficult to share elsewhere on the web. Must visit their site to access their database.

Kentucky

Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure: Search by Physician's last name

Search form is easy to use.

Louisiana

Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners

Licensee Verifications

Manitoba

The College of Physicians & Surgeons of Manitoba

Maryland

Maryland Board of Physicians: www.mbp.state.md.us

DoctorScorecard rating: 8 out of 10


The good: Easy-to-use search form. You can search now in the form above. Detailed information found, including education, address, Medicaid acceptance, medical license status.

The bad: When auditing the site, we checked the record of a doctor that received a very negative score at DoctorScorecard and found no negative comments on file for this doctor at the Maryland Board of Physicians website for the past 10 years. Not even one? If you would like to help audit the site and verify they record the important details about doctors that the public should know about, please contact us with the information you found. You will receive credit for any tips you provide, if desired.

Massachusetts

DoctorScorecard rating: 10 out of 10 (Excellent)

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine provides an excellent source of information on their doctors. Detailed profiles, including malpractice claims. Open and free data, easy to find and share. Enter a name to see if that doctor is in their database.

Michigan

www.cis.state.mi.us

Minnesota

DoctorScorecard rating: 8 out of 10

Easy to search for doctors, lots of detailed information about doctors in Minnesota: www.hlb.state.mn.us

Click on one of the radio buttons to start searching...

www.hlb.state.mn.us

Only complaint: Data is hard to link to. It's hard to share any information by sending a link to friends.

Missouri

DoctorScorecard rating: 4 out of 10

Website: Missouri Division of Professional Registration

Good:

• Site shows if the doctor has a valid medical license.
• Site indicates the Current Discipline Status for some doctors.

Bad:

• As a test, we searched for a dentist and received this message:

  "Discipline information is not being listed for this profession. You may contact the board directly to obtain discipline information."

  That's not very helpful. They don't appear to show discipline information for dentists.

• Website is not very intuitive to use. For example, you must type in the doctor's last name before the first name or else you might not get any results.

You might want to watch this movie that shows you an example of how to use their site:

Movie recorded May-05-2007 showing how to use Missouri's website to find a physician's license status.

Montana

Licensee Lookup System - mt.gov

The good: It's relatively easy to search the database. We typed in the first name and last name of a doctor to retrieve records for that doctor. Website confirms if the person is licensed to practice.

The bad: Website has little if any information about disciplinary actions. Montana is another state that relies on the doctors to voluntarily supply the information. The website stated, as of Mar-11-2008:

"The Division relies upon information provided by licensees to be true and correct..." "Please note that some disciplinary actions against licensees may not appear immediately on the website. Appeals, effective dates of orders and other administrative processes may delay posting on the website. Please contact the specific licensing board directly if you require discipline information that occurred prior to July 1, 1996."

If a doctor committed crimes or accidentally killed a patient, leading to a malpractice lawsuit, why would they want to voluntarily provide that information? Don't expect to find any information warning you about which doctors may be less than ethical or incompetent.

New Brunswick

The College of Physicians & Surgeons of New Brunswick

English Search Form

En Français

New Jersey

DoctorScorecard rating: 5 out of 10

The Division of Consumer Affairs has an online physician lookup.

If you find a doctor with a "board action", their website will not tell you what that action is. If you want to know more you have to write an old-fashioned letter and ask permission to have access to that information. 1989 called and said it wants its mail back. One of these days maybe it will feel like the 21st century.

For more detailed information about doctors, like about their education:
http://12.150.185.184/dca/simple_search.jsp

New Hampshire

New Hampshire State Board of Medicine

The good: It's easy to search the database. Simply typing in a doctor's last name was enough for us to find the doctor we were looking for. Website confirms if the person is licensed to practice, what their specialty is, where they went to school and what year they graduated, etc.

The bad: Website does not appear to provide information about disciplinary actions. And why would it with the disclaimer that New Hampshire has...

"Information contained in this website was supplied voluntarily by the physicians and other sources." (As of Mar-11-2008)

If a doctor committed crimes already or accidentally killed a patient, why would they want to voluntarily provide that information? Don't expect to find any information warning you about which doctors may be less than ethical or incompetent.

New York

DoctorScorecard rating: 5 out of 10

The New York State Department of Health provides information on a small percentage of their doctors. Enter a name to see if that doctor is in their database.

Reason for our low rating for New York:

We performed some tests, searching for doctors with known misconduct, but found no information on New York's site.

From The Village Voice:

"According to a 1999 report issued by the Institute of Medicine...between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in the United States every year as a result of medical errors...But in New York City, there have apparently been no criminal convictions for harm caused by bad medicine since 1995, when David Benjamin, a Queens physician, was convicted of manslaughter for the death of a woman in a botched abortion. And during 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, the New York State Department of Health Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC), which is responsible for investigating physician misconduct, took only 411 actions of any kind. In 144 of those, the doctors lost their licenses."

Here are a few of the doctors we searched for, that did NOT appear on New York's website:

• Dr. Allan Zarkin, AKA Dr. Zorro, "the Manhattan obstetrician who carved his initials into his patient's belly" Source1 Source2
• Dr. Andrea Favara...sexually assaulted a female patient at Cabrini hospital. He lost his job for his actions. Source
• Dr. Alexander Braver..."A psychiatrist with a Bulls Head practice who was convicted of Medicaid fraud has been stripped of his license for three years." Source
• Dr. David Ostad..."Transgendered patient Gina Tilley filed a lawsuit late last year against New York City plastic surgeon David Ostad (who has been cited by state medical authorities 11 times and sued 14 times), complaining that her 2004 saline breast implants had shifted to her armpits. [New York Post, 12-24-06]" Source

None of these doctors show up in New York's database as having professional misconduct. It's hard for us to trust the New York site knowing this, hence our low rating.

Edit, 5/9/07: After additional testing, we were able to find all the doctors above by typing in only the first name or only the last name of the doctor. We could not find any doctors if we entered both the first name and last name.

So it looks like there is an issue with their site searching for both first names and last names. If a visitor goes to the NY site and enters the first name and last name of a doctor, they will see "0 documents found" and could assume that this doctor has a clean record, when this may not be the case.

We sent an email to the OPCM [opmc@health.state.ny.us] on 5/7/2006 asking them about this issue. As of 6/28/2007, there has been no response. We actually sent several emails.

North Carolina

The North Carolina Medical Board

Nova Scotia

DoctorScorecard rating: 2 out of 10

Nova Scotia does not appear to show any disciplinary records for doctors. But, at least you can confirm that the doctor does have a license and you can find the correct address, phone number, and graduation year from college.

The College of Physicians & Surgeons of Nova Scotia: Search Form

Ohio

Ohio License Center: license.ohio.gov

Oklahoma

Oklahoma Board of Medical Licensure & Supervision

DoctorScorecard rating: 10 out of 10

as of 12/3/2007

Pros: Easy to use and understand!

Ontario

DoctorScorecard rating: 10 out of 10 (Excellent)

Source: The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario An interesting feature of this resource for Ontario is that you can clearly see which doctors have a bad record. There is an alphabetical list of doctors with disciplinary actions ranging from insurance fraud to sexual assault of patients. We have yet to see such a clear list of offenses on a US site, but we are not done reviewing all the states.

Before you see a doctor in Ontario, you may want to see if that doctor is shown on the list.

By looking at the site mentioned above, it is more clear to us how Canada and the US are linked together in the medical field. We found a doctor on the Ontario website that got into some legal trouble in the USA (California and Hawaii), then packed his bags and moved north to Ontario, Canada. The California, USA website shows how this doctor had a felony conviction. Those same details are at the Ontario, Canada website. Anyway, you can check on your doctor's records to help make up your mind if you can trust that doctor with your life or a loved one's life.

Lookup veterinarians in Ontario

College of Veterinarians of Ontario

As an audit, we are watching this practice to see if they update their website.

Pennsylvania

DoctorScorecard rating: not rated yet

Pennsylvania Department of State Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs (link found by trucken39)

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico appears to have no online services to look up doctors. (As of Aug-3-2007)

Quebec

Collège des Médecins du Québec: www.cmq.org

Saskatchewan

DoctorScorecard rating: 1 out of 10

Where is the physician search form? We can't find it. If you find it, please tell us.

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan

Rhode Island

DoctorScorecard rating: not rated yet

Information submitted by PainPatient

Go here for Disciplinary Actions against Physicians:
www.health.ri.gov

This is the general site for all information at the state health agency:
www.health.ri.gov

Tennessee

DoctorScorecard rating: not rated yet

Tennessee Department of Health

Texas

DoctorScorecard rating: 4 out of 10

www.docboard.org - AIM... Association of State Medical Board Executive Directors.

Search by Name

First name:
(Leave blank if using partial last name)
Last name:
(Or enter first few letters to see multiple matches)

- or -

Search by License Number

License Number:

Reason for poor rating:

As a test, we looked up some doctors that have been rated in Texas. We found some that had this text:

"Board Actions: Contact Board"

However, when we contacted the board they did not respond. We sent an email to verifcic@tsbme.state.tx.us on May 8, 2007 and as of June 28, 2007 we have had no response. We sent our email from a personal account, asking about one specific doctor. It looks like they do not respond to requests, even though they instruct us to "contact board".

The good: Website is easy to use and it's easy to search for doctors. You can verify if a doctor has an active medical license.

The bad: We have not been able to verify which doctors have had board actions and which doctors have a clean record. The board does not respond to emails.

Utah

Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing

Virginia

DoctorScorecard rating: 5 out of 10

Virginia Board of Medicine www.vahealthprovider.com

The good:

• Lots of details provided for Virginia doctors. For example, the site shows the doctor's education, number of years in practice, what days per week they work, etc. There is data for doctors in surrounding states, too.

The bad:

• Site does not appear to show consumer complaints when they are filed. As an example, noako reported a complaint for a doctor in Virginia and has a pending lawsuit against that doctor. If you search for that doctor at the Virginia Board of Medicine, you will find an impeccable record. There is no hint of any consumer complaints against that doctor even though noako reported a potentially fatal surgery. (The patient states that the doctor told him he had kidney cancer, removed his kidney, mistakenly cut his intestines... and it turned out there was no cancer. Read the entire story here. [medicaldoctorratings.com])


• The data is trapped within that one website. The data is difficult to share elsewhere on the web. It's hard to link to the data.

Washington

Updated Mar-22-2008

Link changed.

Washington State Department of Health

Example video showing how to use the form

(Movie recorded for old form, but they function basically the same.)

Wisconsin

drl.wi.gov health professional lookup

Put your location here

This site is trying to put together a comprehensive list of sites that offer helpful information about doctors. Send an email if you can help or have ideas to help this effort, especially in your home location. Information from any part of the world would be gladly accepted.

Send information to us resembling the format for the above locations and if it's suitable, we'll post it here, giving credit to you. You can make a free profile and choose if you want credit given to your nickname or real name.

Here are some links we are looking at while making this page (US only):

www.fsmb.org

Very clean, organized list of medical boards. (Thanks to Shiloh at citizen.org for the link)

citizen.org

• Ranking of State Medical Boards' Serious Disciplinary Actions 2006
• 2006 Survey of Doctor Disciplinary Information on State Web Sites

ama-assn.org

Links to state medical boards

BRB Occupational Licensing

Links to all licensed occupations in each state of the US.





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