I am a former associate director in a state physician health program (PHP). I also hold faculty appointments at Baylor College of Medicine and Harvard Medical School in medical ethics and psychiatry.

There is a little-known nether realm inhabited by a subset of doctors who have or are suspected of having substance use disorders. These physicians often are referred to state PHPs which, because they’re generally considered voluntary in nature, have …

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I am a former associate director in a state physician health program (PHP). I also hold faculty appointments at Baylor College of Medicine and Harvard Medical School in ethics and psychiatry. I started writing about PHPs a decade ago. Almost immediately, I started receiving emails and phone calls from physicians and their lawyers that had a disturbing theme. They’d been referred to their state PHP for a relatively minor issue, …

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If a physician has a substance use or mental health problem, it is in everyone’s interest — the physicians themselves, their patients and their families — for them to get treatment. And if they go for treatment, they deserve to be treated fairly, but given my six years of experience as an associate director in one state physician health program (PHP) and in working with physicians from all across the …

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