In 1993 I opened a letter from the California
Medical Board announcing a complaint against me.
The days when state boards went easy on doctors were
past. In response to persistent criticism, California had joined others in
raising license fees, hiring investigators, and issuing press releases boasting
of doctors it has disciplined. Every month I receive a bulletin listing names of
those punished with license revocation, suspension, or some humiliating
probation. These doctors seemed sad cases: incompetent, alcoholic, dishonest
without being clever. Was I about to join them?
Although Los Angeles is the largest city in
California, my hearing took place in Diamond Bar, thirty miles east, and it was
a gloomy drive. The investigator ushered me into a room where I sat at a long
table, bare except for the evidence. He told me the name of my accuser who
turned out to be a competing hotel doctor.
The investigator held up a tiny pill box labeled
with my handwriting. The name on the box belonged to a guest I’d seen months
earlier. My rival had visited her, noticed the box, and realized it offered an
irresistible opportunity.
I carry dozens of medications in little boxes.
Handing them out, I once wrote the name of the drug and the instructions. This
violated California State Pharmacy laws, the investigator informed me. Whenever
anyone (not only a pharmacist) gives out a prescription drug, its container
must include the patient’s name, the date, the drug’s name, dose, quantity,
expiration date, and instructions plus the doctor’s name and contact
information. For violating these laws, he added, the board would levy a fine
and issue a written reprimand. This was not, however, an offense that
endangered my license.
The reprimand announcing my three hundred dollar
fine duly arrived. For months I scanned the bulletin, dreading to read my name,
but the offense apparently didn’t qualify. It also never appeared on the
California Medical Board’s web site when I checked for transgressions (you can
look up me or any California doctor at http://www.medbd.ca.gov/Lookup.htm.
Other states have a similar arrangement.
Obeying the pharmacy law required a great deal of
writing on that tiny box, but I went along. As for repaying that doctor for the
dirty trick, my only recourse was to continue setting foot in his hotels. Hotel
doctors hate that.
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