Poll: Physicians spreading misinformation about COVID-19 should be disciplined

Editor's Note

In this poll of 2,200 adults in the US, conducted in December 2021 by philanthropy de Beaumont Foundation, 78% of respondents said physicians who intentionally spread misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines should be disciplined, JAMA Network February 16 reported.

According to JAMA, most professional medical societies and specialty boards agree with the sentiment, and some have issued public statements to the fact, but few physicians have actually been disciplined for spreading misinformation. For instance, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), which represents the state medical boards, stated in July 2021 that spreading COVID-19 misinformation “could put a physician’s license at risk.”

And yet, JAMA cited a complaint filed in October 2021 with the Florida Department of Health’s Medical Quality Assurance Program about Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, the head of the Florida Department of Health, who allegedly “spread doubt about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, promoted the use of unproven and possibly dangerous medications to treat COVID-19, [and] questioned the value of face masks in preventing the spread of the pandemic.” The complaint reportedly went nowhere “because the healthcare provider has not violated any laws or rules regulating this profession.”

It is common belief that misinformation about COVID-19 is linked to vaccine hesitancy for millions of people in the US still unvaccinated. Physicians and other healthcare workers are not the only source of misinformation about the pandemic, but as JAMA reports, when it comes from physicians, it “may well be the most egregious of all because they undermine the trust at the center of the patient-physician relationship, and because they are directly responsible for people’s health,” said Gerald Harmon, MD, president of the American Medical Association.

According to JAMA, another fall 2021 survey, also published in December 2021 but this time conducted by FSMB of its 70 board members, revealed that 67% of respondents have “seen an uptick in complaints about licensees spreading false or misleading COVID-19 misinformation,” but only 21% of the 67% “said they’d taken disciplinary action against a physician for that reason.”

While state medical boards “typically do not make public ongoing investigations,” Humayun Chaudhry, DO, president of FSMB, told JAMA that some state boards have asked for more guidance and that the FSMB Ethics and Professionalism Committee “is developing a more comprehensive guidance that will be voted on for adoption by the organization’s House of Delegates in April.”