Malpractice
Who has to report a malpractice check
The Health Care Quality Improvement Act requires a medical-malpractice payer to report to the National Practitioner Data Bank when it pays money for the benefit of a practitioner to settle or satisfy a written claim or judgment. The report is due in 30 days. A copy goes to the state licensing board in the state where the underlying act was said to have happened.
The Guidebook’s own example is the gap: a hospital and a practitioner are sued; the practitioner is dismissed without condition because that practitioner never treated the plaintiff; the hospital later settles. That hospital payment is not reportable on the practitioner. A refund a doctor writes from personal funds is not reportable either — unless the insurer reimburses the doctor, in which case the insurer reports.
OIG can fine a payer that fails to report. Boards that take a public adverse action have their own reporting clock. None of those duties is triggered by an FDA warning letter to a manufacturer. The letter can name an owner-president; it still is not a written malpractice claim, a judgment, or a board order.
That is why a device letter and a practice claim are different files. Mixing them is how a public record gets asked to do work it does not do.
npdb.hrsa.gov — Reporting Medical Malpractice Payments
These notes paraphrase a public government record. They are not legal advice.