Public Citizen · FSMB · 2021-2023 · LEIE August 2026
US medical board discipline statistics from the live tables
Key findings from the Public Citizen / FSMB serious-action census and the HHS OIG LEIE extract. Registry facts only: not a physician lookup, not a quality ranking, not advice.
- 3,735
- Serious actions (2021-2023)
- 0.81
- National rate per 1,000
- 1.82
- #1 Ohio
- 83,695
- Federal LEIE exclusions
The short answer
Ohio leads US medical-board enforcement at 1.82 serious actions per 1,000 physicians (2021-2023), 2.2× the national 0.81 rate.
Public Citizen and FSMB put 3,735 serious board actions across 51 jurisdictions and 1,540,294 licensed physicians (0.81 per 1,000). Among 50 boards with ≥5,000 licensees, Ohio is 1.82 and Indiana is 0.17. The live HHS OIG LEIE extract lists 83,695 federal exclusions as a separate population. Higher rates measure enforcement intensity, not misconduct prevalence.
Two populations, one page
Public Citizen and FSMB put 3,735 serious board actions across 51 jurisdictions and 1,540,294 licensed physicians (0.81 per 1,000). Among 50 boards with ≥5,000 licensees, Ohio is 1.82 and Indiana is 0.17. The live HHS OIG LEIE extract lists 83,695 federal exclusions as a separate population. Higher rates measure enforcement intensity, not misconduct prevalence.
- 1.82
- Ohio rate /1k
- 0.81
- National rate /1k
- 10.7×
- OH vs IN (≥5,000)
- 83,695
- LEIE exclusions (August 2026)
Board rates are annual averages of serious public actions (2021-2023) over licensed physicians. LEIE counts are the live federal extract. Higher rates describe enforcement intensity, not prevalence of misconduct.
Key findings
Standalone, citable statements from this extract. Free to reuse with attribution to PlainDiscipline (CC BY 4.0; cite the page).
- 3,735 serious medical-board actions (2021-2023) span 51 US jurisdictions covering 1,540,294 licensed physicians, a national rate of 0.81 per 1,000. This is the Public Citizen / FSMB board-rate census, not the federal exclusion list.
- 1.82 serious actions per 1,000 physicians in Ohio (290 actions, 53,110 licensees) versus 0.17 in Indiana (16 actions) among the 50 boards with at least 5,000 licensees, a 10.7× spread. Vermont (4,338 licensees, rate 0.85) sits off that comparable ladder.
- 364 serious board actions make California the volume leader (0.73 per 1,000, below the national 0.81). Ohio is #1 on rate with 290 actions. Rate and volume are different orderings of the same 3,735-action census.
- 23.4% of the 3,735 serious actions (874) sit in the five highest-rate rankable boards (OH/WI/ND/MI/IL). Those counts live inside the national total; they are not a second census.
- 83,695 HHS OIG LEIE exclusions are in the live extract (as of 2026-08-11). That list is a separate federal-program population from the 3,735 board serious actions. Do not add the two figures.
- 39.8% of LEIE rows (33,327 of 83,695) are coded License Revocation or Suspension. That is a statutory LEIE category share, not a share of state-board serious actions.
- 9.1% of LEIE rows (7,600) are tagged Physician. The largest provider bucket is Licensed Healthcare Professional at 20,737 (24.8%). LEIE is not a physician-only file.
- 10.6% of LEIE rows (8,830 of 83,695) carry a license number in this extract. Absence of a number is a field-sparsity fact, not evidence that a person is unlicensed.
Rate ladder, not a volume ranking
Bars are serious actions per 1,000 licensed physicians among boards clearing the 5,000-licensee floor. The gauge is Ohio's multiple of the national 0.81 baseline, capped at 3×.
Top rates (≥5,000 licensees)
Source: Public Citizen Health Research Group Ranking of the Rate of State Medical Boards’ Serious Disciplinary Actions · 2021-2023 FSMB licensed-physician counts (2023). LEIE extract 2026-08-11 is a separate population.
How to read these numbers
Keep three labels. (1) Serious board actions, 2021-2023 Public Citizen / FSMB census: 3,735 actions, 0.81 per 1,000, comparable only for boards with at least 5,000 licensees. (2) Raw action counts, which reorder the same census (volume ≠ rate). (3) HHS OIG LEIE exclusions, a live federal-program list covering many provider types, not a complete state-board history. See methodology and the state table.
Download the jurisdiction snapshot: state board statistics CSV (CC BY 4.0).
Verify this page
According to the Public Citizen Health Research Group, the Federation of State Medical Boards, and the HHS Office of Inspector General, serious board-action rates and federal exclusions are published in fixed reporting windows. Every figure on PlainDiscipline is rebuilt from those Public Citizen / FSMB board-rate tables and the OIG LEIE extract; no number is typed in by an editor. Key Findings recompute board-rate totals, the ≥5,000-licensee ladder, volume vs rate, top-5 share, and LEIE category/specialty/license-field aggregates from the live SQLite tables. No figure is typed in by an editor. states.total_actions is the per-state LEIE count, never the board serious-action census. Data current as of August 11, 2026.
Board rates and LEIE exclusions are published regulatory counts for a fixed reporting window - not physician-quality rankings, medical advice, licensing recommendations, or real-time board-case status. Data changelog