Complaints against 49 doctors dropped
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Professional discipline complaints against 49 Florida doctors have been dropped because the state didn’t meet the statute of limitations, according to a published report.
Health News Florida reported last week that the Department of Health didn’t file an official complaint within the six-year term limit in 49 cases, meaning they have been closed before any action could be taken.
“There are going to be a lot of cases we didn’t protect the public on,” Health News Florida quoted Chief Prosecutor Ephraim Livingston as telling the Board of Medicine at a meeting in June.
In some of those cases, he said, “patients died.”
Department of Health spokeswoman Eulinda Smith said they have been working to reduce the backlog.
“We work tirelessly with our prosecution services unit in all the cases that we get, with the manpower that we have and the information that we have, to truly get the cases down and closed in order to get before the Board of Medicine and the other various professional boards as well,” Smith said.
Health Department officials told Health News Florida that state law blocks the release of any information about the complaints. Even members of the medical board will not be allowed to view them.
“We don’t have any control over cases that haven’t been presented to us,” Dr. Fred Bearison, chairman of the Board of Medicine, told the publication. “We don’t even know about them.”
The time limit begins when the incident takes place and ends six years later.
The statute was set by the 2001 Legislature and doesn’t apply in situations involving offenses like sexual misconduct and drug dealing.