Bant Breen:

Dr. Hank Choudry is a physician, medical educator, and the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States, which represents the nation-state medical licensing boards, and co-sponsor and the United States medical licensing examination. Tell us a little about what are you working on right now. What’s the focus of the organization? Well, that

Hank Chaudhry:

that’s a great question because one of the things we learned this past year is the power of data. When I joined the FSMB, I recognize and realize we have a whole bunch of data, but it was kept in paper records. We spent a number of years digitizing them and making them accessible. We now publish every two years in our own Journal of Medical Regulation, a census, because before that a lot of people were guessing about how many physicians there are. What are their demographics? What are their backgrounds? We now have that kind of data. Beyond just basic data, we also have data about who is licensed, who has been disciplined, and what are their specialty training areas? Are they a US graduate or an international graduate? That kind of data, especially in the middle of a national emergency, has been especially critical to allow healthcare providers of every background, not just physicians, to be able to practice. For example, across state lines, either in person or through telemedicine. We partnered with the federal government to work on a project called providerbridge.org to enable those kinds of credentialing data about physicians to be accessible to hospitals and health systems at the public level. Anybody can get that information for free. People don’t know that. If you reach out to docinfo.org, you can look up any physician in the country and then EPA physician assistant to find out a little bit more about them. Data has been very helpful in the pandemic,

Bant Breen:

How are people? How are people surviving? What are some of the things that you’ve noticed with that group?

Hank Chaudhry:

Especially during a national emergency, where you don’t know what’s going to happen early on, we didn’t know where this would head. The primary mission of the state medical boards is to protect the public. At the same time, in a national emergency, we also wanted to make sure that we were helpful and seen as providing the resources needed, so that doctors could practice medicine, to help out wherever they could. That’s where, some years ago, a few years ago, we put together something called an “interstate medical licensure compact” with our licensing boards, that enables doctors to get licenses to practice medicine in multiple states very quickly. Now, of course, every state-issued emergency guideline that allowed physicians to practice across state lines relaxed some of the privacy regulations in the middle of an emergency. A lot of changes had to go on, we had to make sure that the data was accessible, because we have about 200 employees, mostly in Texas, but also in DC, and wanted to make sure they were able to work remotely. For me, as CEO of my organization, it was important that we were able to be nimble, and able to be helpful, while at the same time preserving our mission to protect the public.

Bant Breen:

Tell me a little bit about how you see the near future and maybe the medium future evolving in your space?

Hank Chaudhry:

I think telemedicine is here to stay. We had a period of about two months, last year when New York was the epicenter where we have more telehealth visits in this country than in-person visits. That’s incredible. No one thought that would happen. Telemedicine, in many ways, is here to stay. The licensing boards have to figure out how best to address it because they want to be seen as helpful, but they also want to make sure that public protection, privacy, and other safeguards are in place.

Bant Breen:

Dr. Hank, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back. 

To see the full interview on the Uncaged YouTube channel, go to: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY99u2vEvUI

 

 

 

E: qstudio@qnary.com