Source: Charlotte Observer
Lawsuit alleges conflict in how positions are filled on licensing panel.

A Raleigh physician and three others filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the N.C. Medical Society exerts too much control over which physicians are appointed to the state board that licenses and disciplines doctors. As a result, the suit alleges, the N.C. Medical Board has repeatedly failed to investigate and discipline dangerous physicians.

The suit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, describes several cases of alleged misconduct by doctors, including Dr. Richard Paul Greenberg, the former Shelby neurosurgeon who failed to tell the board, in his license application, that he was blind in one eye and had been sued for malpractice multiple times. The suit alleges the board didn’t investigate Greenberg and others until it got pressure from newspapers and elsewhere. “None of these (plaintiffs) are seeking any monetary compensation,” said Burton Craige, their Raleigh lawyer. “They just want to see a better system.” Craige said the relationship between the medical board and the medical society is “an obvious conflict.”

All eight physicians on the 12-person medical board are members of the state medical society. One of the eight is a doctor of osteopathy and was not nominated by the medical society. Under state law, the medical society sends nominations to the governor to fill the doctor vacancies on the medical board. Medical society spokesman Michael Edwards said nominees don’t have to be society members, but he did not know how many nonmembers, if any, have been nominated in recent years. Edwards said the governor makes the appointments, and can reject the society’s nominees. In the last five years, Gov. Mike Easley has rejected one nominee, Edwards said.