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Flawed state oversight lets doctors accused of abuse continue to see patients

Updated: Mar 6



By Emily Hoerner - Chicago Tribune - 26.02.2024 - [USA] - [Prevention] A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Chris Slaby, said in a statement that actions in many of the cases identified by the Tribune took place under prior administrations and the agency is “committed to protecting the public from professionals who have sexually assaulted patients.”

He said the agency has expanded resources to investigate complaints in recent years, including by adding four attorneys to the health and medical prosecutions teams. Camile Lindsay, the new acting director of the department’s Division of Professional Regulation, has expedited temporary suspensions in some cases by allowing rulings based on documented evidence instead of requiring a trial proceeding, he wrote.

Slaby said that although prosecutors are supposed to notify the department when medical providers are indicted on sexual assault charges, “they often fail to do so.” Slaby ​​acknowledged that the agency does not have to wait for criminal charges to take disciplinary action but noted that law enforcement often does not choose to notify the state about investigations still in progress. Lindsay is reaching out to law enforcement to encourage more reporting, Slaby said.

The agency is also pursuing legislation, Slaby said, that would require health care facilities to report allegations of sexual assault or misconduct to the agency within 24 hours, as well as requiring hospitals to report to the agency more quickly when they fire licensed health care workers or change their duties for certain reasons, such as when the person was found to have threatened patient care.

Under investigation, still providing care

One patient was so upset after her appointment with Dr. Haohua Yang that she vomited outside her car after talking about it with a Yorkville police officer.

She had made the October 2012 appointment because of lower back pain and brought along her 2-year-old son. As the little boy slept nearby, the doctor touched her vaginal area with an ungloved hand, she told police.

The woman wasn’t the first patient to contact the police about Yang, an internist who ran his own practice out of an office in suburban Yorkville. Several months earlier, another patient experiencing back pain had told police the doctor touched her inappropriately during an appointment and had an erection she could feel and see.

If Yang worked at a hospital, officials there who learned of a patient’s abuse allegation would be required by law to report it to the Illinois Department of Public Health, triggering an investigation. That requirement didn’t apply, however, to Yang’s independent practice. Doctors and other health care providers accused by patients of sexual misconduct kept practicing – sometimes for years – because of gaps in Illinois laws and a licensing agency that can be slow to take disciplinary action, a Tribune investigation has found.

The providers went on to harm additional patients, in some cases, as their licenses remained in good standing with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Though Illinois law requires hospital officials who learn of abuse allegations to take action to protect patients, the Tribune found that some medical providers who work outside those settings were left to operate largely unchecked until they were charged with a crime.

In one case, an independent doctor continued seeing patients for two and a half years as several patients complained to police about his behavior. State law does not require police or prosecutors to notify the licensing agency of investigations into health care providers, only of certain criminal charges.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, meanwhile, sometimes took years to discipline medical providers accused of sexual misconduct.

The agency did not take action against a nurse’s license for more than two years after learning he had been fired from a hospital over allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior. The nurse went on to face criminal sexual abuse charges after a woman alleged he sexually assaulted her while providing in-home care.

The agency did not suspend the license of a chiropractor until more than two years after he was found guilty of battery stemming from sexual contact with a patient. When it did finally act, the agency blamed the delay in part on the practitioner for failing to notify the agency of the outcome of his criminal case.

Illinois law does not require medical providers to tell patients they are under police investigation or, in many cases, that they have faced discipline from the state, making it difficult for patients to make informed decisions about whom to entrust with their care. Although the agency maintains a website where patients can look up the status of a provider’s license, it is often not clear why the person was disciplined. The site sometimes fails to disclose the full extent of the allegations against doctors, using euphemistic phrases such as “inappropriate conduct” and “boundary violations” to describe their actions. The reasons for discipline are often described in a line or two. Some other states post full disciplinary reports online and require doctors who are on probation to inform patients, which is not the case in Illinois.


In California, a 2019 law requires doctors to notify patients if their license is on probation for sexual misconduct, a move fueled in part by the #MeToo movement and media coverage of Dr. George Tyndall’s decades of alleged abuse at the University of Southern California. In Kentucky and Iowa, the medical licensing boards post disciplinary documents online that spell out accusations against health care professionals.


“I think that there needs to be more transparency,” said state Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, who chairs the Senate Public Health Committee. “It seems like there have been too many loopholes that really need to be tightened up to protect people.”


The Tribune reported last Sunday that several well-known health care systems failed to remove providers from patient care after learning of sexual misconduct allegations, and that those institutions faced few meaningful consequences from the state for their actions. One 2005 law that would help document and track abuse allegations and other problems at hospitals has yet to be implemented.


“When we fail to examine the full story arc of an issue, that’s how we end up with these holes,” said Illinois Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, who is now working with the Illinois Department of Public Health on legislation to require doctors offices and satellite clinics to report patient abuse allegations to the state under the same rules that apply to hospitals. “What you just described to me is a patchwork where the patchwork itself has holes in it.” A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Chris Slaby, said in a statement that actions in many of the cases identified by the Tribune took place under prior administrations and the agency is “committed to protecting the public from professionals who have sexually assaulted patients.”


He said the agency has expanded resources to investigate complaints in recent years, including by adding four attorneys to the health and medical prosecutions teams. Camile Lindsay, the new acting director of the department’s Division of Professional Regulation, has expedited temporary suspensions in some cases by allowing rulings based on documented evidence instead of requiring a trial proceeding, he wrote.


Slaby said that although prosecutors are supposed to notify the department when medical providers are indicted on sexual assault charges, “they often fail to do so.” Slaby ​​acknowledged that the agency does not have to wait for criminal charges to take disciplinary action but noted that law enforcement often does not choose to notify the state about investigations still in progress. Lindsay is reaching out to law enforcement to encourage more reporting, Slaby said.


The agency is also pursuing legislation, Slaby said, that would require health care facilities to report allegations of sexual assault or misconduct to the agency within 24 hours, as well as requiring hospitals to report to the agency more quickly when they fire licensed health care workers or change their duties for certain reasons, such as when the person was found to have threatened patient care. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm.


 
 

Dignity4Patients Commentary: Loopholes that protect doctors and other health care providers accused of sexual misconduct must be closed. Every government is responsible for safeguarding patients. USA is leading in new laws that mandate healthcare institutions to report sexual assault allegations within 24hrs. Relying on Hospital Grievance Committees or Medical Councils to handle sexual assault claims is inadequate for addressing this issue.

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