Support Letter for Proposed New York State’s Patient Notification Bills
Dear New York State Assembly Leaders and Members:
Public Citizen, a consumer nonprofit advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters nationwide, is pleased to share our strong support for New York State’s proposed identical patient notification bills S.1476-B Krueger/A.10022-A Lee.
The proposed bills are of critical importance because they would grant current and prospective New York patients, as well as their health care representatives (hereafter, patients), the right to know whether any of their physicians: (a) were found by the Board for Professional Medical Conduct (hereafter, the Board) to have committed certain misconduct resulting in patient harm — including acts of sexual abuse as well as drug or alcohol abuse — or signed a stipulated settlement with the Board; (b) received a criminal conviction for either directly harming patient health; or (c) were placed on probation for engaging in inappropriate prescribing. To our knowledge, only two other states (California and Massachusetts) have passed similar patient-right-to-know legislation in recent years.
Unfortunately, the largely self-regulated U.S. medical system has a long history of allowing dangerous physicians to continue practicing without being required to disclose their disciplinary or criminal histories to patients. For example, Public Citizen’s research has shown that 38% of the 1,354 physicians who were reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank between 2003 and 2017 due to sexual misconduct continued to hold active licenses and clinical privileges in the states where they were disciplined or involved in a medical-malpractice payout.[1] We also found that, among the 317 physicians who had clinical-privileges actions or malpractice-payment reports due to sexual misconduct, 221 (70%) were not disciplined by any state medical board for their harmful behavior.
Therefore, by granting New York patients the right to know whether their physicians were disciplined or convicted due to professional misconduct or other serious patient harm, the proposed bills would close a major loophole. For too long, dangerous physicians have exploited this loophole to hide their past misconduct from unsuspecting patients. The bills would help New York take a crucial step toward building trust in the health care system and ensure that patients can make informed decisions about their physicians.
Before passing the bills, we urge the New York State Legislature to consider expanding the scope of covered disciplinary actions to include those taken by any state medical board in the United States, not just New York’s Board for Professional Medical Conduct, as well as serious adverse credentialing actions taken by U.S. hospitals or other health care entities. Such information may already be publicly available through DocInfo.org or certain state medical board websites. Limiting disclosure of disciplinary and criminal history information to those documented in New York would undermine the spirit of the proposed bills.
We also urge the New York State Legislature to enact additional patient protection laws in the near future to help ensure that patients are not harmed by physicians like the disgraced gynecologist Robert Hadden, who betrayed the ethics of his profession and abused patients who sought his care.[2] Examples of such measures include:
- Requiring physicians to offer a trained, licensed chaperone to serve as a “practice monitor” during all breast, full-body skin, genital, and rectal examinations, as well as sensitive procedures;
- Educating patients about what to expect during physical examination before their appointments;
- Expanding and enforcing duty to report laws for sexual abuse and other forms of patient harm; and,
- Improving oversight of sexual misconduct by New York’s Board for Professional Medical Conduct.
Sincerely,
Azza AbuDagga, M.H.A., Ph.D.
Health Services Researcher
Public Citizen’s Health Research Group
aabudagga@citizen.org
References
[1] AbuDagga A, Carome M, Wolfe SM, Oshel RE. 15-year summary of sexual misconduct by U.S. physicians reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank, 2003 ― 2017. In-depth, updated evidence on white coat betrayal. May 26, 2020. https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2523.pdf. Accessed May 21, 2026.
[2] Loughnane J, Levy M, Carlson K. Report of investigation into the circumstances that allowed Robert Hadden to abuse patients. March 10, 2026. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/file/57777/download?token=tUnNbKrl. Accessed May 21, 2026.