Missouri regulators would have more authority to suspend dangerous doctors, and patients would be able to better research physicians, if bills filed in the state Legislature become law. At a hearing to introduce legislation in the state Senate this week, the agency that licenses and regulates doctors -- the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts -- said it supported the effort to reform the state's lax, secretive system of physician discipline. A news organization testified in favor of greater transparency. A doctors' group chafed at one key provision of the bill that would give the board the ability to issue fines. Last year, a Post-Dispatch investigation into patient safety in Missouri showed that the healing arts board is one of the nation's weakest and least transparent.
