Chuck Grassley, a senior United States senator from Iowa, is continuing his efforts with regard to restoring public access of data on malpractice payouts, hospital discipline, and regulatory sanctions against doctors and other health professionals - as well as to hold accountable the federal government official who shut down access to this information.
On October 7, 2011, Chuck Grassley wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, Maryland, stating that The National Practifioner Data Bank's (NPDB's) Public Use File (PUF) serves as "the backbone in providing transparency for bad acting healthcare practitioners" and explained that the data has been used for years by researchers and consumer groups to calculate trends in disciplinary action by state medical boards. His letter was in response to the removal of the database by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The database was removed after a reporter was able to identify a physician's data bank record by comparing the de-identified information with state court records.
Chuck Grassley received a response to that letter, one that he called "incomplete, even while revealing that the HRSA prematurely jumped to conclusions regarding a reporter who used publicly available information to track down the identity of a doctor with a record of malpractice cases." Grassley stated that it looks like the HRSA was trying to protect a single physician who had a malpractice suit and disciplinary action filed against him, and in doing so, the federal government undermined its own mandate to "enhance the quality of healthcare, encourage greater efforts in professional peer review and restrict the ability of incompetent healthcare practitioners to relocate without discovery of previous substandard performance or unprofessional conduct."
Chuck Grassley has said that whoever made the decision to remove the database needs to be held accountable, and that the Public Use File in question should be fully restored on the HRSA website. "Department officials are misguided if they think they can make this issue go away with the response sent to my first letter of inquiry," Grassley said. "This database contains information intended for public consumption, and efforts to shutter access will be fought by those of us committed to transparency where public dollars and the public interest are at stake."
