LOS ANGELES – A study conducted by Medversant Technologies indicates 18.7 percent of healthcare practitioners are operating under "adverse findings" that include malpractice allegations, an expired license or false credentials.

The Los Angeles-based provider of credentialing verification solutions recently surveyed 29,845 healthcare practitioners and reportedly found that 1.9 percent were practicing without a license.

“These findings clearly indicate that key credentials of practitioners need to be verified continuously instead of simply reviewed every two to three years, as is customary in the industry,” said Matthew Haddad, the company's president and CEO.

Haddad said continuous monitoring of credentials identifies high-risk practitioners who might otherwise be missed in a traditional credentialing process and who pose serious risks to patient safety, compromise care delivery and often expose healthcare enterprises to litigation.

The “Medversant 2009 National Provider Adverse Findings Study” surveyed physicians, dentists, podiatrists, chiropractors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other ancillary personnel from 30 healthcare organizations with a state license number under which the practitioner professed to practice at the time of credentials verification.

The study measured the number of practitioners with one or more adverse findings, practicing without a license, or with an adverse finding not reported by the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) or the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB).

According to the study:

• 94.9 percent (2,520 of 2,655) of practitioners with an adverse NPDB finding had one or more malpractice payment reports; 9 percent of practitioners with one or more NPDB reports did not disclose on their credentials application the adverse finding(s) reported by NPDB.
• 4.6 percent of practitioners reviewed had one or more adverse findings related to their license to practice.
• 0.4 percent (131) had multiple adverse findings (when excluding the same action).
• 5.2 percent (1,564) had adverse findings not reported by the EPLS or NPDB.

According to the survey, odiatrists showed the highest number of adverse findings at 26.8 percent, compared to physicians at 20.4 percent and dentists at 13.5 percent. The most common adverse finding across all practitioners was evidence of an NPDB report, at 8.9 percent, followed by license action at 4.6 percent.

“Continuous Web-based monitoring may be the surest way to curtail the growth in preventable medical injuries and avoidable patient deaths,” said Haddad.