Club Med; how the medical fraternity keeps the government from exposing the skeletons in doctors' closets.

• Author: Greenberg, David

Club Med

In 1978, Connie Fay Blackstone, a married Ohio woman in her mid-twenties, found herself severely depressed after the death of her mother. She turned to Dr. Leo Nierras, a psychiatrist, for help. But Nierras was a little too solicitous. During a session with Blackstone, the doctor exposed himself to her and told her, as he masturbated, that he could be both her doctor and her lover. Then he fondled and pinched the woman's breast. Nierras--earlier accused of sexually harassing his former receptionist--was convicted in 1980 of attempted sexual battery. He surrendered his license upon entering prison.

Released after serving three months, Nierras hoped to practice medicine elsewhere, but with sexual battery on his record, his chances looked slim. So when he applied for a temporary license in Missouri, Nierras lied, denying that he'd ever been convicted of a crime. The state issued the license, but the medical board eventually caught on and canceled it. Nierras then practiced psychiatry in the Philippines for two years before returning to the States, where he got lucky again with the licensing board in Pennsylvania. He now serves as a supervisor of psychiatrists at Warren State Hospital.

CBS's "60 Minutes" tells a similar story. A few years before Roe v. Wade, Barbara Seitz, a dancer in Cleveland, wanted an illegal abortion. So she went to see Vilis Kruze, a local doctor, who administered various drugs and implanted an IUD coil for $100. The result was a bloody, botched abortion. Seitz committed suicide and Kruze was jailed, eventually serving time in the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. After his release, Kruze moved to Hawaii, where Kaiser Permanente, without investigating his past, hired him as a pediatrician. A young couple came to him to treat their four-month-old son, who'd come down with a fever. Kruze misdiagnosed the illness, which turned out to be meningitis; the delayed diagnosis permanently brain-damaged the boy. After this episode, Kruze moved to California. There, he was murdered by the brother of a woman who overdosed on drugs that Kruze gave her.

Of course, monsters like Kruze are rare. But between the Kruzes and the Marcus Welbys, there's a surprising amount of room for state-hopping quacks, each of whom theoretically has up to 50 chances to get his act together. One California surgeon, whose license was revoked when his gross negligence led to a patient's death, managed to get credentialed in Michigan. When that second license was revoked after some trouble there, he took up practice in New York City. Another doctor got licensed in Wyoming while under investigation in Michigan. Although he was eventually forced to surrender his Michigan license, Wyoming made no such demands. Soon thereafter, a patient under his care died; only then did Wyoming bar him as well. In yet another case, a Louisiana doctor was accused of sexual molestation by several patients. When investigators looked into his past, they learned he'd been denied full privileges at the Illinois hospital where he used to work because of similar complaints.

Starting to wonder if you should check up on your doctor's background? Nice idea, but good luck. In 1986, Congress tried to stop...