It’s generally not easy to know when doctors egregiously misbehave. And Florida’s Division of Medical Quality Assurance disciplinary process must be as complicated as it looks. The slew of interconnected steps ranges from board reviews, hearings and orders to mediation, appeals and compliance monitoring.

The Florida Health website includes a search for available disciplinary actions taken against doctors and other healthcare professionals. For Dr. Stanley Mark Dratler, who currently operates a practice for geriatric patients in Punta Gorda, Fla., one link appears that goes to a couple of documents about his probation upon violating the terms of the plan stipulating he practice only with a designated physician monitoring him. It’s hard to even tell what occurred from skimming the scanned documents. Plus, the accused “neither admits nor denies the allegations of fact contained in the Administrative Complaint.”

Dratler considers himself healed, at least according to a related media interview when he was among Florida’s first doctors certified to prescribe marijuana. My friend Ben never admitted he had a problem. It appears the state of Florida agrees. No disciplinary actions were posted or made available to the public when he was practicing.

The worst mistake of all would be to not heed what Ben said in a letter to his family, years before his murder-suicide yet fully cognizant of his death coming prematurely one way or another: “Learn from my mistakes.”

It’s the only thing I truly want to take away from the countless hours I spent with Dr. First. The state of Florida and our nation deserve better. Accepting the decades-lingering status quo is the worst thing we can do. Undeniable evidence has spread like an infection. Uncovering facts about doctors, their misdeeds and disciplinary histories, shouldn’t be extraordinarily difficult. Especially when public safety is on the operating table.

Sure, doctors go through a lot to get their licenses. The education is beyond what most of us ever even consider. To not learn from what my friend did – and got away with – simply adds to the sadness of all his victims and their families left in his wake.

Although national NPDB reports and state PRN/PHP programs are responses to when medical practitioners are suffering or especially vulnerable, patients should at least get a better and more realistic understanding of their doctors’ histories. It doesn’t necessarily mean that my friend Ben would have been prevented from his worst atrocities, but awareness can make a profound difference. Programs that instead conceal disturbing information about doctors should be revamped with inherently greater accountability.

Much of what can be learned about the PRN/PHP programs and results, however, comes from the outside trying to look in. What protects doctors and their licenses can indeed end up hurting you or a loved one. I found out from painful first-hand experience that defied logic, as does one of the ways Florida PRN leaders evaluate the program’s success. Besides license retention and theoretical recovery statistics, the board touted a satisfaction survey of physician participants at their most recently reported annual conference. Next to a graphic of a hand making the “OK” sign, a pie chart shows that 93.5% of participants indicated that the program met or exceeded their expectations.

Maybe my friend Ben was among the doctors giving the program rave reviews. Unfortunately, the pain and suffering that some like him inflict never gets reflected in the numbers. He and his girlfriends became different statistics that shouldn’t be ignored. Someone should have stopped Doctor First from continuing to shuck teeth, especially as he abused drugs, alchohol and women.

I became blind by friendship and a desire to support my friend at his worst. The state of Florida had no such sense of obligation, of course. They either looked the other way inadvertently or intentionally.

“No one would be practicing if doctors lost their licenses every time someone filed a complaint,” Ben’s wife Mary asserted, noting that most everyone commits offenses in their lives whether doctors or other professionals. “Ben,” she added, “always did a good job as a surgeon.”

Mary then paused and said, “Well, maybe not toward the end.”

Learn more about how YOU can help drive changes in the ways impaired doctors are assessed, monitored and treated as well as what patients should know about them. Do something. Say something!