Data Collection Method
· Use of multiple databases
· Public Citizen database 1990-1999 records from Medicare, Medicaid, FDA, DEA
· Only half of these doctors matched to medical schools using AMA data so actual rates of physicians from each school that were disciplined are much higher
· California data includes small part malpractice also
· No osteopathic physicians
· Schools with a name change
· Some schools duplicated
· Easy to get errors in schools with similar names or the same town or foreign names, especially for someone not experienced in working with such databases
· Newer schools that made the threshold cut may not have as many physicians or as many problems showing up since the doctors were younger. Age 40-44 is the highest malpractice age for physicians.
· Unsure whether the type of disciplinary actions were final decisions or not.
Data Collection and Analysis Problems
Overall
· No data on Charles Drew, Morehouse - These schools have higher numbers of black graduates. Including even low numbers of graduates with analysis would have been appropriate. If these and other schools with higher numbers of minority graduates had similar problems, the indication would not have been problems at individual schools, but a societal problem. The paper may have been unwilling to deal with the consequences of an examination of data by race or gender. It is unlikely that this was not something considered by the paper, or anyone with experience in doing such research.
· Inclusion of the lower numbers in the Ohio data violates the guidelines noted in the introduction about having enough numbers. This also magnifies the error of not including data from Charles Drew, Morehouse, and other schools.
· There are duplications in the data in all three databases. Regarding the 2 New Jersey medical schools, it is likely that the data for both have been combined.
California Data
· U of Cincinnati duplication
· Penn Med Coll Philadelphia
· SUNY Syracuse duplication
· Cooper Medical College ??? no city or state or country given
Ohio Data
· After noting how larger numbers are important and after excluding medical schools from analysis with fewer total graduates, the Ohio data used violates these guidelines. Many colleges were included in the published lists with low numbers. This included those disciplined less than 10 in school and total numbers of grads in state less than 100 (50 was low end cutoff apparently) Used at least 100 as cutoff in California, over 500 cutoff in national data
· Marquette med school - name change
· U of Virginia duplication
National Data