Like physicians in Georgia, those in North Carolina are required by law to provide information about their backgrounds so the state’s medical board can post it online.
In North Carolina, however, most of that information is checked by the board.
Jean Fisher Brinkley, the North Carolina board’s director of public affairs, said the board verifies all “adverse” information reported by the state’s approximately 40,000 physicians. That includes criminal convictions and malpractice judgments and settlements, she said.
“No information in that category goes up (on the board’s website) until a human being looks at it,” Brinkley said.
If something is found to be inaccurate or deceptive, it’s corrected and an email is sent to the physician whose profile is affected, she said. She estimated that corrections have been made “a handful of times” every year since the board began posting the information online in 2009.
“It’s not mandated by law,” Brinkley said of the checks. “But our feeling is any reasonable person using our web site would presume we’ve taken some steps to verify the information.”
She said a board employee spends about 20 hours a week on the process, using various search engines and logging into the state court system.
Although the number of licensed physicians in North Carolina isn’t substantially more than in Georgia, the North Carolina board has the advantage of being far better funded.
The North Carolina board, funded through the fees it collects, has an annual budget of more than $8 million. That’s nearly four times the budget of the Georgia board, which turns its fees over to the state treasury and relies primarily on legislative appropriations for its funding.
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