Massachusetts Medical Board Disciplinary Actions: Sanctions and Appeals

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine (BORIM) handles disciplinary actions against physicians licensed in the state, investigating complaints and imposing sanctions that range from a written reprimand to permanent revocation of a medical license. Anyone can file a complaint, every formal order the board issues is public, and a searchable physician profile system lets patients check a doctor’s record before an appointment. In recent years the board has drawn sharp criticism for moving too slowly and treating physicians who harm patients too leniently, concerns that came to a head with a 2025 Boston Globe investigation and a steep drop in the state’s national enforcement ranking.

What Can Get a Physician Disciplined

Massachusetts law and the board’s regulations at 243 CMR 1.03 lay out a broad set of grounds for discipline. The main categories include:¹²

Gross misconduct, gross incompetence, gross negligence on a single occasion, or ordinary negligence on repeated occasions.
Fraud in obtaining a license or in the practice of medicine.
Practicing while impaired by alcohol, drugs, physical disability, or mental instability.
Conviction of any crime that reasonably calls the physician’s ability to practice into question.
Aiding unlicensed practice, or practicing on a lapsed, suspended, or revoked license.
Malpractice as defined under M.G.L. Chapter 112, Section 61. The board treats a civil jury verdict establishing liability as dispositive.³
Discipline in another state for substantially similar reasons, or failure to report that discipline.
Cheating on a medical licensing examination.

The regulations contain an explicit carve-out: no physician can be disciplined for providing or assisting in reproductive health care or gender-affirming care, as long as the services are lawful in Massachusetts and consistent with accepted professional standards.⁴ The board also generally will not entertain complaints based on conduct that occurred more than six years before filing.

Sanctions the Board Can Impose

If BORIM finds a violation, it has a wide menu of sanctions under 243 CMR and M.G.L. Chapter 112, Section 5:⁵⁶

Revocation. Permanent cancellation of the license. A revoked physician generally cannot apply for reinstatement for at least five years, and only if the board finds reinstatement serves the public interest.
Suspension. Temporary removal of the right to practice, for a definite or indefinite term. Indefinite suspensions can come with probation and conditions for reinstatement.
Probation. The physician must enter a Probation Agreement with conditions such as approved practice settings, monitoring, and audits.
Reprimand. A “severe censure.” Only written reprimands count as formal discipline.
Censure. An official expression of disapproval, one step below a reprimand.
Fine. Up to $10,000 per classification of violation.
Practice restrictions. Prohibiting certain procedures, limiting practice to a specialty, or requiring supervision.
Public service. Up to 100 hours.
Required education, training, counseling, or monitoring.
Resignation. A physician under investigation may tender a voluntary resignation, which ends all privileges and counts as a final disciplinary act. The board is not obligated to accept one.

Sanctions take effect immediately unless the order says otherwise. For minor violations where no patient was harmed, the board can accept an Assurance of Discontinuance, a side agreement in which the physician accepts conditions and pays investigation costs without a formal hearing. That resolution still gets reported to national data systems.⁴

Recent cases show the full range in use. In the first quarter of 2026, Keri McFarlane Bentley, M.D. had her inchoate right to a license revoked; Paulo J. Oliveira, M.D. and Lucian Neville, M.D. received stayed suspensions with probation; Ellen A. Hilsinger, M.D. was reprimanded and fined $20,000; and George Csank, M.D. and Daniel A. Delvecchio, M.D. resigned their licenses while under scrutiny.⁷

How to File a Complaint

Any person, organization, or board member can file a complaint against a Massachusetts physician, and the board will consider anonymous complaints as well. Patients submit complaints through the online portal at medboard.mass.gov. You will need the date and location of the incident, the physician’s name and license number, names of witnesses, and any supporting documentation such as medical records or correspondence.⁸ Each physician or facility requires its own separate complaint, and the online form cannot be edited after you submit it, so draft carefully before hitting send.

Once a complaint arrives, a board investigator reviews it to screen out frivolous or unsupported allegations. If the Complaint Committee finds insufficient evidence, the complaint is closed. If the committee believes a violation may have occurred, it can order the physician to respond in writing within ten days.⁶

If the evidence warrants further action, the committee recommends that the board issue a Statement of Allegations, a formal order requiring the physician to appear and show cause why discipline should not be imposed. From there, the case resolves in one of two ways. The physician may negotiate a Consent Order, a settlement that imposes specific disciplinary terms without a hearing. Or the physician may contest the allegations, in which case the matter goes to the Division of Administrative Law Appeals (DALA) for a formal adjudicatory hearing under M.G.L. Chapter 30A.⁹ A DALA magistrate issues findings and a recommended decision; the full board makes the final call on sanctions. Both Consent Orders and Final Decision and Orders are posted publicly on the board’s website.

Emergency Suspensions

When a physician poses an immediate danger to patients, the board does not have to wait for the full process. Under 243 CMR 1.03(11), BORIM can summarily suspend a license before any hearing in two situations.⁴ If the board determines, based on affidavits or other documentary evidence, that a physician is an immediate and serious threat to public health, safety, or welfare, it can suspend the license on the spot. A hearing on whether the suspension should remain must occur within seven days. If the board finds that a physician may be a serious threat, it can first order the physician to file opposing affidavits within three business days before deciding whether to suspend.

Summary suspensions have been contested. In the five years after a 2015 Supreme Judicial Court ruling that required the board to support such suspensions by a preponderance of the evidence, DALA denied or vacated the board’s summary suspensions in nine of eleven cases it reviewed.¹⁰

When Impairment Is Handled Outside Discipline

Not every physician in trouble ends up with a public disciplinary record. Massachusetts runs a separate, non-disciplinary track for physicians dealing with substance abuse, mental health issues, or other health-related impairments through Physician Health Services (PHS), a nonprofit founded by the Massachusetts Medical Society.¹¹

Health care providers in Massachusetts are generally required to report colleagues who violate the licensing statute. There is an exception for physicians with alcohol or drug problems who voluntarily enter PHS monitoring, as long as no patient harm is alleged.¹² Monitoring typically involves random drug screens, documented therapy, support groups, and regular meetings with a PHS physician. Probation Agreements involving substance abuse usually run five years, and the clock resets if the physician fails to comply. PHS operates independently from BORIM’s enforcement side, but when a physician is under a board-ordered probation, PHS submits quarterly compliance reports and must notify the board immediately of any noncompliance. For a patient looking up a doctor, this means that some physicians with past treatment histories will not appear in the public disciplinary record.

How to Check a Physician’s Record

Massachusetts publishes physician disciplinary records through its Physician Profiles system at FindMyDoctor.mass.gov. A full profile may include board disciplinary actions, criminal convictions, hospital discipline, malpractice payments, and background details such as specialty, medical school, residency, and insurance plans accepted.¹³ Each entry records the date, case number, specific action, the legal instrument used (Consent Order or Final Decision and Order), and any fine or costs assessed.

The board also maintains a searchable archive of its formal orders back to January 2012, organized by year and month.¹⁴ For official copies of disciplinary documents, you can call the board’s Public Information Officer at (781) 876-8260.

One caveat about malpractice: the board scrutinizes claims only under specific conditions. It takes a closer look where the physician already has an open complaint, where the payment attributable to the physician is $1 million or more, or where the physician has three or more paid claims.³ A single smaller payment on a profile does not necessarily trigger review.

Criticism of How the Board Has Been Operating

In October 2025, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team published “Standards of Care,” an investigation that found the board had become sluggish on complaints and increasingly lenient with physicians who caused harm.¹⁵ The Globe built a database drawing on nearly 30 years of licensing records, covering 79,436 doctors, 8,382 malpractice claims since 1986, and 4,047 in-state disciplinary actions since 2002. It described a pattern of the system “increasingly protecting neglectful doctors.”

The central case was Dr. Derrick Todd, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. According to the Globe, nearly 250 patients alleged that Todd sexually abused them over more than a decade, and at least ten complaints from patients and colleagues were documented over that period without effective intervention. When Brigham and Women’s finally began investigating in April 2023, it allowed Todd to continue seeing patients for two months, during which at least 23 additional patients were allegedly assaulted. Todd then continued practicing at another facility until signing a voluntary, non-disciplinary agreement to stop in September 2023.¹⁶ Todd faces criminal rape charges in Middlesex Superior Court and has pleaded not guilty. Nearly 250 former patients have filed civil lawsuits. In April 2025, Mass General Brigham adopted a policy requiring a trained chaperone to be present for all sensitive exams unless the patient opts out.

Independent data from Public Citizen tracks the same trend. In the national consumer group’s 2023 report covering 2019 through 2021, Massachusetts ranked 16th for serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 licensed physicians, at a rate of 1.05.¹⁷ In the October 2024 report covering 2021 through 2023, the state dropped to 38th at a rate of 0.49, with annual serious actions falling from roughly 38 to 19.¹⁸ Public Citizen called the national picture “dangerously lax,” and the Massachusetts decline was among the sharper drops.

Appealing a Board Decision

A physician who disagrees with a final board decision can seek judicial review in Massachusetts Superior Court under M.G.L. Chapter 30A, Section 14, after first exhausting any available agency review.¹⁹ The action must generally be filed within 30 days of receiving notice of the final decision. Review is conducted without a jury and is confined to the administrative record; the court does not take new evidence unless it was material and there was good reason it was not presented earlier. A court can overturn or modify the board’s decision if it rested on an error of law, violated the constitution, exceeded statutory authority, was unsupported by substantial evidence, or was arbitrary and capricious, while giving “due weight to the experience, technical competence, and specialized knowledge of the agency.”²⁰

1
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 243 CMR 1.00 Disciplinary Proceedings for Physicians
2
Justia. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 112, Section 5
3
Massachusetts Bar Association. Reporting a Malpractice Case to the Licensing Board
4
Legal Information Institute. 243 CMR 1.03
5
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. BORIM Profiles Terms and Definitions
6
Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth. 243 CMR 1.00 Disciplinary Proceedings for Physicians
7
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Disciplinary and Other Board Actions, 2020–Current Year
8
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. File a Complaint Against a Health Care Professional or Facility
9
Massachusetts Medical Staff Services. BORIM Presentation, Fall Conference 2024
10
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Decisions Show Overreach Pattern by M.D. Licensing Board
11
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Overview of the Board of Registration in Medicine
12
Massachusetts Medical Society. Procedures for Hospital and HMO Physician Health Committees
13
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Check a Licensee’s Profile
14
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. View Board of Registration in Medicine Actions
15
Boston Globe. Standards of Care Investigation
16
Boston Globe. Massachusetts Medical Establishment Failed to Stop a Troubled Doctor
17
Public Citizen. Ranking of the Rate of State Medical Boards’ Serious Disciplinary Actions, 2019–2021
18
Public Citizen. Ranking of the Rate of State Medical Boards’ Serious Disciplinary Actions, 2021–2023
19
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Learn About Appeals From Administrative Agency Decisions Under General Laws c30A
20
General Court of Massachusetts. General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 14