National Practitioner Data Bank

• The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which is under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, began operating that National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) in 1990. The NPDB is designed to address the movement of problem medical professionals from one medical facility to another, or from state to state. Each state's medical licensing agency, as well as all hospital administrators and medical professional societies, are required to report negative action taken against a doctor, such as a revocation or suspension of his license due to incompetence or misconduct. Malpractice insurance companies must also report to the NPDB all settlements against doctors, dentists and other licensed health-care professionals. This information can be accessed if you are a plaintiff's attorney or plaintiff representing yourself in a pending malpractice lawsuit.
  
  

State Licensing Agencies

• All states have a medical licensing agency governing the practice of medicine in that state. Some states, such as California, provide a publicly available database of information on all licensed medical professionals that will show malpractice judgments and arbitration awards against a licensed medical professional. The limitation of such databases is that they typically do not show private settlements of malpractice claims.
  
  

County Level Sources

• The original source for all malpractice lawsuit information against a medical professional will be the county courthouse where civil lawsuits are filed. Most counties, such as Los Angeles County Superior Court, maintain a website that provides a publicly available database of lawsuit filings that can be searched by name, usually requiring a reasonable access fee. If you want to search the records in a county that does not have such a website feature, you can do an on-site search of the court records using the information tools made available in the court clerk's office.
  
  

Database Aggregators

• A number of commercial database aggregators (e.g., GAPRS and Intelius) that compile information nationwide of civil lawsuit records that includes malpractice lawsuit information. You can purchase information from the company by requesting a search of the medical professional's name in all the aggregated civil court records; however, the data will only include lawsuit information from those courts that sell this information to the database aggregators. Not all courts do this. Before you purchase this information, you should verify that the search will encompass those courts that you are interested in searching.