2% of Health Practitioners Are Not Licensed; 19% Have Issues with Credentials

He recalls a case in Georgia involving a home health therapist employed by an agency owned by a chain of hospitals. The therapist had failed to renew his license, and subsequently was involved in a negligence suit involving a patient death in the home.

"Even though the negligence wasn't caused by the license issue, or linked to negligence, the court ruled it was a liability for the hospital because the therapist did not have a license at the time," Haddad says.

According to the company's report, the number of practitioners with problematic credentials or licenses, or an unusual number of malpractice payouts has gone up since the previous report was done in February 2008. In that earlier report of 9,600 practitioners, 11.3% "were practicing with one or more of 52 questionable findings."

In the latest survey of 29,845 practitioners, 18.7% were found to be practicing with one or more of 110 questionable findings, and 8.9% had one or more reports in the National Practitioner Data Base. Of those with problems, 4.6% had one or more license actions requiring review according to accreditation and regulatory standards.

The Medversant survey noted that a 2006 report from the National Practitioner Data Bank suggested that practitioners with more than one malpractice payment report "are responsible for more than half of malpractice payments made, and are one third more likely to have other adverse findings than practitioners with a single malpractice payment report."

"Continuous monitoring of credentials can be shown to identify higher risk practitioners who might otherwise be missed in a traditional biennial or triennial credentialing process," the survey said.