Top 10 US States by Medical Board Disciplinary Actions
PlainDiscipline ranks US states by total state medical board disciplinary actions against physicians, using the per-state aggregate.
Research period:
Research question
Across the 50 US states and the District of Columbia, which jurisdictions have recorded the largest total number of medical board disciplinary actions against physicians, and how do absolute action counts compare to per-physician action rates that adjust for the underlying physician workforce in each state?
Methodology
Every number on this page is pulled live from PlainDiscipline's current dataset at the moment you load it, ranked from highest to lowest and limited to the top 10. Nothing here is a hardcoded or cached figure: when the underlying FSMB U.S. Medical Regulatory Trends and Actions dataset is refreshed, this page reflects the new numbers automatically.
Values are shown in the units and precision published by Federation of State Medical Boards. Where the source reports figures in thousands or millions, we scale them for readability; where the source reports raw counts, we preserve them with standard thousand-separators. Records with a missing or zero value on the ranking metric are excluded rather than shown as artificial zeros, and Federation of State Medical Boards occasionally withholds values for confidentiality, small-sample, or quality-control reasons, those records are omitted by design, not displayed as misleading zeros.
Federation of State Medical Boards publishes the FSMB U.S. Medical Regulatory Trends and Actions on its own release schedule; when a new release lands, PlainDiscipline updates this ranking automatically without any change to this page. If the agency later revises a published value, the revision flows through the same way. See the methodology page for the full source vintage and refresh history.
Outliers are shown as published, not silently smoothed or clipped, so readers can judge them in context via the source link. Where the source changes its reporting period, column definitions, or coverage scope between releases, we note it on the methodology page rather than blending incompatible vintages into one ranking.
PlainDiscipline maintains an editorial standards process for how rankings are built, how outliers are handled, and how disputed values are corrected. The byline at the top of this page names the editorial owner accountable for its framing. Every figure traces back to the original Federation of State Medical Boards record via the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the public source. Corrections, takedowns, or clarifications can be requested through the contact channels in the site footer.
Top 10 US States by Medical Board Disciplinary Actions
Live data, updated automatically as the source dataset is revised
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects PlainDiscipline's current dataset (10 rows shown). When the source is refreshed, this table updates automatically.
| # | State | Total actions | Serious actions | Total physicians | Rate per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 9,635 | 364 | 167,246 | 0.73 |
| 2 | Florida | 8,910 | 238 | 93,686 | 0.85 |
| 3 | Texas | 5,843 | 247 | 96,058 | 0.86 |
| 4 | New York | 4,393 | 330 | 107,789 | 1.02 |
| 5 | Ohio | 3,758 | 290 | 53,110 | 1.82 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | 3,495 | 60 | 65,624 | 0.3 |
| 7 | Arizona | 2,668 | 96 | 32,876 | 0.97 |
| 8 | Illinois | 2,370 | 230 | 56,875 | 1.35 |
| 9 | Mississippi | 2,035 | 31 | 12,881 | 0.8 |
| 10 | Louisiana | 1,929 | 24 | 18,406 | 0.43 |
Source: Federation of State Medical Boards, FSMB U.S. Medical Regulatory Trends and Actions. Figures are pulled from PlainDiscipline's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed. Federation of State Medical Boards, FSMB U.S. Medical Regulatory Trends and Actions. Figures are pulled from PlainDiscipline's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is California, with a value of 9,635 on the Total actions column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. No number on this page is hardcoded, when Federation of State Medical Boards publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (9,635) and the 10th-ranked record (1,929) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from Federation of State Medical Boards, specifically the FSMB U.S. Medical Regulatory Trends and Actions. PlainDiscipline ingests the source vintage published by the agency and serves it from its current dataset, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published source vintage propagates to this page automatically. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how the figures are compiled.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
State medical boards publish disciplinary actions on their own schedules and through their own data interfaces. Some boards publish every action in full detail; others publish only summary information or require records requests for full case data. Aggregation across states therefore mixes data of varying completeness, a state with thorough public reporting will show higher counts than a state with restrictive reporting, even at comparable underlying rates of physician misconduct. Action counts include the full range of disciplinary outcomes from administrative warnings through license revocation, and the severity distribution varies across states. The denominator for rate calculations is each state's count of active licensed physicians as published by the state board.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 states by disciplinary action rate per 1,000 active physicians (minimum 5,000 physicians to qualify, normalizes for state workforce size)
Sources
- Federation of State Medical Boards - https://www.fsmb.org/
- Public Citizen, Health Research Group - https://www.citizen.org/topic/health/