{ "id": "1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report", "slug": "1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report.html", "year": 1997, "month": "December/January", "monthNum": 12, "headline": "Military hospitals report", "kicker": "Medical Malpractice", "author_name": "Brent Johnson", "author_title": "", "affiliation": "NICAR", "summary": "A Dayton Daily News investigation reveals serious malpractice and safety issues at military hospitals, where inadequately licensed doctors operate with minimal oversight and legal accountability due to systemic loopholes that protect them from lawsuits and state regulation.", "keywords": [ "malpractice", "military", "hospitals" ], "topics": [ "Investigative Methods", "Health & Environment", "Government & Politics" ], "technologies": [], "full_text": "Military hospitals report\n\nBy Brent Johnson\nNICAR\n\nThe teenage daughter of an Army hospital nurse in Colorado underwent a routine exploratory procedure to determine whether her severe abdominal pain was due to appendicitis or a tubular pregnancy, but emerged permanently crippled in her right leg after a main artery was punctured by a doctor not licensed to practice in the state. That doctor, who had a history of malpractice allegations and disciplinary actions against him, was approved for transfer to the hospital by its chief of gynecology, who himself had a history of allegations and disciplinary actions against him, because the department was short-staffed.\n\nIn Washington, D.C., a Navy lieutenant who had an abnormal grouping of veins and arteries at the base of his brains now suffers from memory problems, mood swings and sleep disorders caused by an unsuccessful catheterization attempt that tore an artery. The new problems have kept the lieutenant from achieving the mandatory promotion needed to continue in the service. The internationally known doctor at a nearby university hospital where the lieutenant was transferred was later unable to catheterize the same artery that had healed but was by then almost completely closed. The doctor did make the following reflection: \"There are two kinds of doctors in the military. They're either fabulous, wonderful doctors, or they're spectacularly incompetent.\"\n\nIt is that spectacular incompetence that a recent series in the Dayton Daily News detailed painstakingly. The series, led by reporters Russell Carollo and Jeff Nesmith and editor John Erickson, was more than a year in the making.\n\n\"Whenever you take on the military, you have to have time on your hands,\" Erickson said. \"The military tries to drag out requests for public records.\"\n\nMalpractice loopholes\n\nThe reporters documented a secretive atmosphere destined for trouble. Military doctors are not required to have either malpractice insurance or licenses from the states in which they practice. By law, they cannot be sued. The defendant in malpractice claims is the U.S. government, not the doctor. Furthermore, claims cannot be filed by active military personnel or personnel stationed overseas. They conclude that the military is \"a magnet for problem doctors,\" a fact only made worse by recent downsizing.\n\nThe team used more than a dozen databases to lead them to the appropriate records and interviewees that shaped the series on care provided by the 115 hospitals and medical centers and 471 clinics that comprise the Military Health Services System. Some databases were acquired only after a federal judge ordered them released by the military; some were built by the newspaper itself based on information from state medical boards; and some were updated and combined from two prior series on the military.\n\nThe Dayton Daily News also went to court to obtain the Department of Defense's TORT2 database, which identifies individual doctors, their qualifications and their links to medical malpractice claims. The paper still has not acquired it.\n\nSimilar records identifying civilian doctors with malpractice claims are required by states and available to the public.\n\nThe National Practitioner Data Bank, too, is used daily by hospitals, HMOs, insurance companies and state medical boards for background checks. But the newspaper found, for instance, that from 1994 to 1995, though the Army paid $66 million of taxpayer dollars in malpractice claims, only one of its doctors was reported to the Data Bank.\n\n\"The military employs about 18 of every 1,000 doctors in America, yet it accounts for just two of every 1,000 malpractice reports in the database,\" Carollo and Nesmith wrote.\n\nThe reporters also discovered that the military's own confidential database contains nine times the number of malpractice cases it has reported to the Data Bank.\n\nUnable to force its release, Erickson said the newspaper instead used the tort databases maintained by each branch of the military.\n\nThose databases do not include the name of the doctor involved as in the TORT2 database but do include the name of the attorney filing the claim and a synopsis of each case.\n\nSorting through the records for leads on the most egregious examples, he said the team would, for instance, isolate claims of brain damage and see whether they occurred at the same base or involved the same attorney. Erickson stressed the importance of creating your own databases. By entering state medical board information, \"we were able to supplement what little we got from the military.\" Erickson said the series has generated a strong response. The newspaper has received hundreds of calls from people wanting to tell their stories. \"The reason is that the problem is there. It's a bad system and many think they're mistreated.\"\n\nBrent Johnson can be reached at (573) 882-0684, or send e-mail to brent@nicar.org", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6", "extracted_at": "2026-07-05", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "1998-may-system-protecting-military-malpractice", "score": 0.394 }, { "slug": "1995-april-tracking-hospitals-that-mistreat-babies", "score": 0.337 }, { "slug": "2005-marchapril-peace-accidents", "score": 0.249 }, { "slug": "1996-may-pulitzer-finalist-for-national-reporting-military-secrets", "score": 0.233 }, { "slug": "2000-december-nursing-mistakes", "score": 0.214 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report.json" }