Delaware Tightens Oversight of Physicians

By Grena Porto, RN, MS, ARM, CPRHM


In July, Delaware Governor Markell signed a set of nine bills that tighten oversight of physicians and increase protection of children in medical care. Known collectively as The Bradley Bills, Delaware’s new legislation is the most comprehensive of its kind in the country and is named after a physician pedophile who got away with sexual abuse or rape of more than 100 children over the course of 10 years, while fellow physicians, hospitals, government agencies, and others looked the other way. Complaints from parents and nurses were ignored. The story has vast implications for peer review, physician autonomy, medical staff governance, the role of hospitals in medical staff oversight, the limitations of “small government,” the role of the press in exposing system failures, the need for transparency, and a host of other hot topics. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, so here is the story:

Pediatrician Earl Bradley came to Delaware in 1994, and over the course of the next 10 years was investigated five times for allegations of sexual abuse of children. Each of those investigations went nowhere and each of the agencies did not inform one another, let alone the public, of the allegations or the investigations. Indeed, it was only after The News Journalsubpoenaed documents and revealed the extent of the allegations and mishandling of the investigations that Delaware’s Attorney General, Beau Biden, initiated an investigation that ultimately led to the new laws. 

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