Phony Physicians

Becoming a doctor requires years of study and hard work. Getting listed in the telephone directory as a physician, which may make it possible to lure patients and prescribe some medicines, can be surprisingly easy. Several areas pro vide effective safeguards against phony physicians. Anyone asking to be listed as a doctor in St. Louis, for example, is first checked out with the city and county medical societies. In Cleveland, the names of those wanting to be listed in the Yellow Pages as physicians or surgeons are submitted to the state licensing board for authentication. But in many metropolitan areas, Ma Bell is willing to take the word of any caller who claims to be a doctor. In Boston and Atlanta, no checks are made on telephone subscribers who ask to be listed as M.D.s. Although California's department of consumer affairs does make periodic checks on M.D. listings, a survey of 200 physicians in the San Francisco directory revealed that 5% were not licensed to practice medicine in the state. In the nation's capital, the situation is even worse: 10% of the almost 4,000 physicians listed in the Washington, B.C., telephone book are unlicensed.

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