Experts Should Be In the Sun

One problem I hear a lot of complaints about, and I agree, is the Consultant Reports from the Board. Right now, not only do we not know who wrote the report, but we don’t actually get a copy of the actual report. Currently, the Board provides a report that is created by Board staff that is reported to be the consultants report. And it may be. The perception is that the Board is not providing all the information. The reason this is problematic is:

1) We don’t know who the expert is.
2) How do we actually know the report is legitimate, as we don’t see the report. The perceived problem is we can’t see what the expert actually said because the report has been sanitized by Board staff. A report like that would never be admissible in court or at SOAH.

The perception is that the Board is withholding information and being unfair as a result. Already there is the belief (real or imagined) that the ISC process is pre-determined. These reports only lends support to these fears.

Personally, I don’t believe Board staff would generate false information knowingly. But, I do fear that information that we may find important may not be included by omission or accident as teh staff does not view the information as critical or even necessary. The solution for these perceptions and fears is to provide the actual report to the Board expert. Back when I worked for the Board this is exactly what we did. We would remove identifying information of the expert, but we provided the actual expert report. By doing so, we removed any concern that the Board was not providing full information to the doctor under investigation.

I believe this is the intent of the legislature is the provide the actual report. This is something the Board should return to doing. It is an issue of fairness and helps the Board with its perception problem.