Patient safety depends on medical providers and hospitals being held accountable when they do harm. When there are no consequences for medical negligence, patient care never gets better.
The California agency charged with regulating physicians, the Medical Board of California, too often protects doctors instead of the patients it is supposed to serve. The doctor lobby holds sway in the California legislature too, standing in the way of reform.
Consumer Watchdog partners with patients and families who have been harmed in the health care system to push back against these abuses, reform the Medical Board, and enact patient safety legislation to make health care safer.
REPORTS & RESOURCES
PATIENT BILL OF RIGHTS
Consumer Watchdog called on the Medical Board of California to adopt a Patient Bill of Rights and reform a regulatory system in which doctors’ records of patient harm are hidden and patient complaints go unheeded. Read the news release and the Patient Bill of Rights.
PATIENT RIGHT TO KNOW
California became the first state in the nation to require doctors to disclose before a patient’s appointment if they are on probation for sexual assault or other serious misconduct. The law was blocked by the medical lobby until the MeToo movement helped ensure the voices of survivors of physician sexual assault were heard. Read about the victory for patient safety.
OPIOID OVERPRESCRIBING
A seven-year battle by a father who lost his young children to reckless overprescribing culminated in a mandate for California doctors to review a patient’s prescription history before prescribing opioids and other dangerous narcotics.
