And while this case may seem like an isolated situation, the reality is that similar issues affect healthcare access and efficiency all over the country. In Ohio, where the state government has recently awarded Aetna a $1 billion contract to create a program for coordinating care for children with complex needs, the consequences could be particularly immediate.
When dangerously incompetent neurosurgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch (the subject of several lawsuits, as well as ample media coverage) was practicing medicine in Texas, records of the harm he’d caused patients piled up before he was finally stopped. More efficient credentialing could have been a key component in stopping him earlier along his path of destruction by preventing him from avoiding the consequences.
Before dozens of people were wounded or killed and hundreds of kids went without care, smarter credentialing practices might have saved the day by both reducing human error and making it harder to hide deliberate fraud.