Promoting Freedom of Choice in Health Care for Patients & Physicians

Health Care Freedom and quality health care go hand in hand.  Many of advances in medicine were utilized for many years by innovative physicians before they were generally accepted by mainstream medicine.   Yet medical boards continue to harass innovative providers across the country.  Generally  patients of integrative physicians have sought their care for one of two reason: they prefer an integrated more natural approach or  because conventional medicine failed to resolve their problems.  The general medical community is just starting to realize what the public has known for many years, an integrative approach to health care is superior to a health care system, that relies solely on surgery and pharmaceutical interventions.  Change is coming slowly, a number of medical schools are now adding integrative medicine and nutrition to their curriculum.

The Washington State Legislature changed the laws in the state to allow alternative and unconventional medical practices.  However, the Washington Medical Quality Assurance Commission (MQAC) is generally ignoring the law and persecuting integrative medicine providers solely on the grounds that they practice alternative or integrative medicine.  The MQAC is charged with overseeing standard allopathic (traditional) physicians, physicians that practice integrative medicine, and Naturopathic physicians.  The MQAC by it's own admission has no expertise in any area outside of standard allopathic medicine.  This creates a huge problem since the board does not have the expertise to determine what constitutes appropriate professional behavior.  The MQAC oversees all physicians including Naturopathic physicians, but without any of the required expertise to perform these tasks.  

The percentage of integrative physicians that have been subject to disciplinary action far exceeds the percentage of traditional physicians subject to disciplinary action by MQAC.  In some areas of the state over 50% have been subject to charges by the MQAC.  How are these attacks being justified?  Primarily through paragraph (4)  in RCW 18.130.180.  The MQAC  seems to define incompetence as any practice they do not understand or like and they disregard the second sentence.  Using the reasoning that if they don't understand it, then there must unreasonable risk of harm.  They of course decide what constitutes unreasonable risk.

The following is portion of Washington State RCW used to persecute providers using non conventional therapies:

(4) Incompetence, negligence, or malpractice which results in injury to a patient or which creates an unreasonable risk that a patient may be harmed. The use of a nontraditional treatment by itself shall not constitute unprofessional conduct, provided that it does not result in injury to a patient or create an unreasonable risk that a patient may be harmed;

These attacks can be devastating to a provider and his patients.  The mere filing of charges can cause the loss of the provider's malpractice insurance.  The legal costs to defend these attacks can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, even if the provider prevails severe economic damage is done to his practice.

The Missouri Supreme Court noted that most of the advances in medicine were initially ridiculed.  The recent Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Barry Marshall experienced the same ridicule for his work with H Pylori.   Their advice to the Missouri Board of Medical Quality Assurance was to get out of the way of progress. 

In Europe they use advanced techniques to treat cancer and other conditions using integrative medicine techniques that are quite successful.  Yet in Washington State the options are limited to surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy (which has largely been abandoned in many European countries because the Europeans consider chemotherapy to relatively ineffective)  Why, because the regulatory actions of MQAC in Washington State are suppressive.  The Washington State Legislature created legislation which was designed to provide the citizens of Washington State more options in their health care, but the MQAC is working just as hard to see that doesn't happen by attacking the providers of integrative health care.

The current MQAC policy is completely arbitrary and capricious.  There are no guide lines and the Board attacks some practitioners for using integrative techniques, yet seems to tolerate other physicians using the very same techniques.

MQAC policy is designed to stop integrated and alternative medicine in the state, which will severely limit health care choices for the citizens of Washington State.  If the citizens of Washington State want the freedom to make their own health care choices, then they are going to have to demand action by their elected officials to correct the problem.