Doctors Behaving Badly

Although Doctors Behaving Badly tends to focus on exactly what you would expect, its mission is to make people aware of the many ways that patients are left unprotected.

There are nearly 1 million licensed, practicing physicians nationwide. Antidote has no ability to count how many are “behaving badly,” but it is safe to say that only a slim minority are tainting the reputation of the medical community. Doctors who abuse, injure or kill patients are the surrogate markers for an illness in the physician discipline system. They are not the illness.

State medical boards are Ellis Islands for doctors. Doctors licensed in another state or fresh out of medical school have to pass muster with the board before being allowed to see patients in that state. If they have a history of problems in other states, the medical board can tell them to look for work elsewhere. One of the most common reasons states cite for disciplining a doctor, in Antidote’s experience, is discipline by another state.

An accurate curriculum vitae for Dr. Louis John Del Giorno would show a 20-year history of missed diagnoses, multiple overdoses and avoidable patient deaths.

In that time, medical boards have documented lapses that have led to injuries or deaths in 35 patients, and those are just the ones the regulators caught.

Here’s what you shouldn’t do if you get caught breaking the medical rules in Vermont: skip class.