SACRAMENTO —
The pleas for help find him. They arrive by email or seep into his social media account. One showed up in a tightly sealed letter to his home. After years of feeling ignored by the Medical Board of California, the writers hope he’ll finally be the one who hears them.
Eserick “TJ” Watkins can guess the types of allegations that could be waiting inside: the stories of a doctor’s misconduct that left an over-prescribed teen addicted, a father missing a limb, a daughter dead. He has heard hundreds of these cases as a member of the medical board, which oversees the discipline of doctors in the state.
Watkins used to forward the pleas to board staff, but now he finds it pointless. California’s medical board, Watkins said, is designed to silence aggrieved patients, a doctor-led panel that protects fellow doctors.
For decades, patient advocacy groups have accused the board — composed of eight physicians and five public members — of being too solicitous to the doctors it regulates. A few lawmakers over the years have taken up their cause, eking out watered-down reforms in the face of a powerful doctors’ lobby.
But now it’s an insider calling for change. In an extraordinary move, Watkins last week filed a whistleblower complaint with the state auditor’s office urging the agency to investigate the inner workings of the board and its decisions, which are largely cloaked under the law.
“It’s one thing to not feel heard; it’s another to be dismissed and ignored,” said...
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