How do we protect ourselves from fake medical professionals?

Hello all. Since I live in Georgia, and the teachers have been in
the news, I was wondering if anyone has thought about this:
what safeguards are in place to stop fraudulent persons from
eithing faking medical and pharmaceutical degrees from real foreign schools, and getting a real credential evaulation or from doing something like St. Regis does, with the fake evaulator?

How can we be sure that the pharmacist or medical professional that we visit is really qualified?

The quality of medical care is one reason that I moved to the United States, but it seems like everywhere I turn someone is lying about academic credentials, and it worries me, especially when it comes to healthcare (like drug counterfeiting-another issue, but one that scares me too).

Thank you all for this forum, it is very helpful to so many.

P.S.-Here's an article from, well, I don't know when, about a fake pharmacist.

http://www.weartv.com/news/Stories/march/0309/neighborpharmacist6pm.shtml

 

Physicians in Georgia are licensed by the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners. You could ask them. Here's their database where you can look up physicians:
http://www.medicalboard.state.ga.us/bdsearch/index.html

 

This story about fake physician Dennis Roark may interest you:
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/qdoc3.htm

 

Faking a med degree is possible I suppose but it would still take someone with a great deal of medical knowledge to practice medicine. To even get into a residency program one must pass the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam) of which there are 5. Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, TOEFL, and one other (see www.USMLE.org). These tests are about 8 hours each, costly, and very difficult. They would be comparable to a CPA test, I suppose. My wife (a physician) worked with an American who studied and passed mediccal school in Dominican Republic and it took her 5 years of study to pass the USMLE. The Step 1 test is so difficult that KAPLAN's preparation course lasts up to 9 months and at a cost of p to $8000, and similar costs apply for the other prep courses. Then the USMLE courses will cost you about $5000. The USMLE does not guarantee you a placement into a residency program. You must apply with all other American and Foreign doctors, of which about 1% of foreign doctors find residency placement (my opinion, and from what I have witnessed, foreign doctors are better than American, the americans just have better technology to help them). So even if someone does get through they are either a genius, know someone in the system to get them through, or already have a HUGE amount of medical knowledge, that in the absence of these hurdles would be practicing medicine.

 

The Georgia Secretary of State has a website where you can check to see if someone has a license for their profession:

https://secure.sos.state.ga.us/myverification/

Pharmacists are among the list of professionals listed.

 

Congressman Pepper's Subcommittee on Fraud, which specifically looked at fake medical schools and practitioners in 1983, estimated there were "thousands" of people practicing medicine illegally. The majority, I believe, are those who avoided the licensing system entirely, and simply opened an office and hung up a shingle. Some had a short course somewhere, such as a military "field medic" training; others used what they would have called common sense, passing along things they couldn't handle to real doctors.

But the Pepper report also suggested a certain laxity in hospitals, citing numerous scary cases, such as the accountant who worked as a physician in a New York hospital emergency room, who finally attracted the attention of a nurse when he referred to "sewing people up" (and didn't seem to know the word "suture").

 

I knew I should have checked that reference list closer and I thought the license drawn in crayon looked suspicious. A phone call to the state Board works. Every state has one in pharmacy.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if a narcotic count was done after this incident?