Your client, a physician, receives a letter from the executive director of the N.J. State Board of Medical Examiners (the Board), advising that a complaint has been filed by one of his patients. The letter attaches the complaint and asks for the physician’s response within 21 days. Or, a physician receives a “demand for statement under oath,” posing questions (essentially interrogatories) about prescriptions that the physician has written. Alternatively, the physician may receive a letter from the Board demanding that he or she appear before a committee to discuss a complaint or an aspect of the physician’s medical practice. How seriously should these demands be taken, and what role do you, as counsel to the physician, play in responding?
As a longtime practitioner, once having represented the Board and having appeared before it for 27 years, this writer can report that the majority of Board inquiries result in no disciplinary action against the physician under scrutiny. However, some matters do end up with the imposition of discipline, including license suspension or revocation, and, as described below, the Board has become more assertive in prosecuting cases against physicians.
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