From Boston Magazine--this article about a service that might be what you are looking for:

The Quack Hotline

Now you can call toll free to get up-to-date information on your doctor. But be forewarned: You still won't get the whole story.

By Christopher Szechenyi

Before you go to your next appointment with a new doctor, you can do your own checkup on the physician's credentials, training, and malpractice history thanks to a new system that helps you make an informed choice about whom you should trust with your life and the lives of your loved ones.

By simply calling a new state-run hotline, 800-377-0550, at the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, you can now obtain profiles outlining physicians' malpractice settlements, hospital discipline hearings, punitive actions, and criminal convictions. "What we're giving consumers is a profile, not an in-depth history, but a tool to help you decide whether you want to see a doctor," says Alexander Fleming, executive director of the state agency responsible for regulating doctors.

Before you see psychiatrist Leonard R. Friedman at his Back Bay office, for example, you might want to call the hotline. A three-page profile shows that Friedman's license to practice psychiatry was revoked in 1987 and that he paid an "above average" malpractice settlement three years later. His license to practice medicine was reinstated in 1991.

But one problem with the state's $350,000 profiling system is that it fails to provide any details to flesh out those kinds of facts. Why was Friedman's license taken away? What did he pay a settlement for? And how did he earn the right to go back into practice? You won't find any of the answers in his profile. "It's just a piece of the puzzle," Fleming says.

Delve a little deeper into Friedman's past and you'll find plenty more. According to a 49-page Order of the Board, dated June 24, 1987, he lost his license after the board concluded that he engaged in sexual activities with a widow who sought his help in her struggle against depression. Afterward, he paid an undisclosed sum to the patient to settle a lawsuit she had filed against him. Four years later, he was given back his license to practice psychiatry on the condition he see a therapist himself for one year. Today, Friedman says that the allegations lacked merit and that the board was prone to disciplining doctors.

Friedman is one of 250 of the 27,000 licensed physicians in Massachusetts who have tarnished records. Want to know if your doctor is one of the 250? The board will either read the profile to you, fax it to you, or mail it to you within 24 hours.

THE PROFILING SYSTEM, the first of its kind in the nation, is a model for several other states planning to respond to the public's demand to know more about their doctors. And that demand is becoming urgent as more and more people enroll in HMOs and face the daunting task of choosing a new doctor from a list of hundreds of physicians.

"Medicine is becoming pretty faceless and doctors are interchangeable these days with the proliferation of HMOs," Fleming says, adding that the days are over when doctors and patients had a relationship lasting from cradle to grave. The profile system, he says, was designed to give consumers confidence.

The trouble is, the Massachusetts model has several severe shortcomings when it comes to helping you make a choice. Call the board's hotline for neurologist Walter S. Levitsky Jr.'s profile and you'll find he graduated from Albany Medical College, had postgraduate education at Jersey City Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic, and has been in practice 35 years. The profile also says the state board yanked his license in 1988.

But this is what the public profile leaves out: According to his detailed disciplinary file at the Board of Registration, which is not automatically given to hotline callers, Levitsky's license was revoked for what the board called "prolonged sexual exploitation" of a patient who went to him for treatment of migraines. He was also cited for fondling the breasts of several other women who came to him for treatment of back pain and headaches.

In 1994, Levitsky was given back his license, but he was put on probation for five years. During that time he was ordered to undergo lithium therapy for a bipolar disorder and to submit to random blood screens. Under his probation agreement, Levitsky, who now practices in Peabody, must have a chaperone present whenever he sees a female patient. (Efforts to reach Levitsky were unsuccessful.)

So how can you find out the real story behind the profiles? You have to call a special number--617-727-3086--and ask the official for documents in your doctor's disciplinary file. If the doctor has had a license suspended or revoked, or put on probation, ask the official to send you the "statement of allegations," the "final decision and order" of the board, and the "probation agreement." If you really want to dig, ask for references to the doctor's court cases and go look them up. Only then will you get a complete history of a doctor's practice.

CASE AFTER CASE examined by Boston Magazine shows that the Board of Registration has left out incriminating details from the profiles. For starters, the reports are supposed to include 10 years of a physician's history, but the magazine's investigation found vital information omitted from the profiles for that time period. The public profile of one prominent surgeon, for instance, says he is a graduate of Boston University School of Medicine and has had no criminal convictions, no hospital discipline, and no board action against his license during the past decade.

Open that same surgeon's disciplinary file at the Board of Registration, however, and you'll discover that his license was revoked in 1987: for "lewd and lascivious behavior"--namely, stopping his car and exposing himself in front of a seven-year-old girl. The doctor's license to practice medicine in Massachusetts was later reinstated, and he moved to the Southwest, where he now practices. Fleming says that the omission of the doctor's license revocation was an administrative error.

Another thing the board's public profiles tell you is whether a doctor has average, below-average, or above-average malpractice settlements. It's like a scorecard for a baseball player's batting average. It also puts the settlement in perspective. For instance, Friedman's profile says he is among 2,483 psychiatrists licensed in Massachusetts and 87 of them, or 3.5 percent, have made malpractice settlements in the past 10 years. The profile says Friedman's settlement was "above average," but the document also throws in several caveats about drawing any conclusions from medical malpractice payments. The profile warns you not to presume malpractice has actually occurred just because a claim has been paid. It could mean an insurance company wanted to cut its potential costs and get rid of the case. In addition, each physician's profile states that "Some studies have shown that there is no significant correlation between malpractice history and a doctor's competence."

But the profiles neglect to reveal the circumstances behind the settlements, which might indeed influence your decision in choosing a doctor--or at least prompt you to ask the doctor to explain them. Consider Asher Harel, an obstetrician and gynecologist whose profile says he has had two "above average" settlements, without giving any details. The profile does say Malden Hospital restricted his right to work there for three months after a patient died as a result of a childbirth in which he allegedly delayed surgery and failed to diagnose her hemorrhaging.

To find out more about Harel, we asked the board for a reference number that enabled us to examine the court documents that aren't given out by the board or described in the profile. A lawsuit filed against him in 1994 claims that Harel incorrectly projected the delivery date of a 17-year-old Cambodian patient and failed to adequately diagnose the conditions that resulted in her child being born with mental retardation, epileptic seizures, cerebral palsy, and blindness. It's a claim most pregnant women would want to discuss with him if they knew about it.

Harel calls the allegations in the pending suit "unfounded" and says that they are "totally unrelated to what happened to the patient." He points out that in 27 years of practice, he has delivered more than 3,000 babies, and he often takes on high-risk pregnancies. "I work in Chelsea and Revere with an extremely high-risk population--the poor, homeless, immigrants--and I accept everyone who walks into my office."

SOME PHYSICIANS dislike the new profiling system. "I feel it's unnecessary and unfair to physicians," says Barbara Rockett, a Newton surgeon and past president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, which supported the creation of the system. "I also think it's misleading for patients. I don't think they can assess the information."

Leonard Morse, an internist in Worcester, says that he thinks the profiling system fosters distrust between patients and doctors: "Doctors don't want to harm patients. They strive to do the best they can." Morse adds that he is afraid the profiling system will force doctors to avoid high-risk cases because they could have bad outcomes that would stain their records.

Despite those misgivings, the physician profile system is scheduled to go on-line on the Internet this spring, and it may also be available on a CD-ROM in May. Unfortunately, it will read like a yellow pages directory unless the board puts more details in the profiles. In the meantime, consumers should supplement the profiles with old-fashioned impressions and recommendations from friends and family members before they make a final choice of a doctor.