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Once a model, state medical board lags badly

Thousands of records of physician malpractice and misdeeds are routinely expunged, leaving public in the dark about whether to trust their doctor — or find another.

By Callum Borchers and Stephen Kurkjian

 |  Northeastern University Initiative For Investigative Reporting  

  March 18, 2012

In 2005, a Suffolk County jury decided that Dr. Mary Ames-Castro and another obstetrician caused irreversible brain damage to an infant girl during a delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital. The $23.8 million malpractice judgment was one of the largest in state history. But the judgment was never entered in a public database maintained by the state Board of Registration in Medicine The veil of secrecy afforded to Ames-Castro is commonplace in Massachusetts, according to a Globe analysis.

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