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)
- Search by name, specialty, or license # .. Check physician profile
- 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.
- 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
- or -
Search by 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.
DoctorScorecard Main Page