As Senators Durbin and Obama continue to press the VA about their hiring practices and current staff more information keeps coming out about Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez's past deeds. The Boston Globe has published a time line of Dr. Veizaga-Mendez's horrific path of medical malpractice. Since the story broke much attention has been centered on how the VA hires doctors. The truth is for many hospitals and health care organizations the same challenges exist in finding out about doctors credentials.
The only national tool which tracks doctors across state lines is the National Practitioners Data Bank. This resource contains information about doctors and if they have any hospital disciplinary actions, state sanctions or malpractice awards. Unfortunately, as Dr. Veizaga-Mendez proved, this is far from a perfect system.
The hopeful outcome of this is that a better system of how doctors get hired will emerge.
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