Thousands of doctors practicing despite errors, misconduct

Dr. Greggory Phillips was a familiar figure when he appeared before the Texas Medical Board in 2011 on charges that he'd wrongly prescribed the painkillers that killed Jennifer Chaney. The family practitioner already had faced an array of sanctions for mismanaging medications — and for abusing drugs himself. Over a decade, board members had fined him thousands of dollars, restricted his prescription powers, and placed his medical license on probation with special monitoring of his practice. They also let him keep practicing medicine. In 2008, a woman in Phillips' care had died from a toxic mix of pain and psychiatric medications he had prescribed. Eleven months later, Chaney died.