Doctors with bad records can often still practice on patients. Here's what needs to happen to fix this.

When it comes to improving the nation’s broken system of doctor discipline, many advocates say the starting point should be fixing something that was created to do the job in the first place. In 1986, Congress created the National Practitioner Data Bank, pledging it would improve health care and reduce fraud and abuse. The data bank records all sorts of things: malpractice payments, disciplinary action, restrictions of hospital privileges and other transgressions.