South Carolina secrets: What the medical board doesn’t tell you about problem doctors

SOUTH CAROLINA (WBTV) - It was a few days after Christmas in 2017 when Sherri Burriss had her first surgery. She has few memories of that morning; it was bitterly cold, that much stands out. She was incredibly nervous.

Something else stands out, too. As she lay in a room at AnMed Health’s hospital in Anderson County being prepped for spinal surgery, she said medical staff were wondering out loud to each other whether the surgeon would arrive on time.

In the moment, she didn’t think much of it.

It wouldn’t be until two surgeries and several months later that she would think about their words again.

History of alcohol abuse

One week before Burriss’ surgery, police lights blazed behind neurosurgeon Dr. Larry Davidson as he drove on a family vacation in California.

Court documents and records from the North Carolina Medical Board tell the public what happened: Davidson was charged for driving while under the influence on December 22, 2017.

By this time in his life, Dr. Davidson had worked at several hospitals across North Carolina and South Carolina. He’d held licenses in both states for years, including for more than two decades in South Carolina where he went to medical school.

He practiced in the Charlotte metro area until roughly 2010; court records would later allege he was struggling with alcoholism at the time of his departure and went unemployed for several months before finding employment over the border in South Carolina. He told his employer about this and his enrollment in rehabilitation, the lawsuit said.

He had practiced in Anderson County for several years by late 2017 when court records indicate he began struggling again, culminating in the DUI charge that would end his employment at AnMed Health.

Dr. Davidson reported his DUI charge to both state medical boards and itted, according to multiple lawsuits, that he was struggling with a severe relapse in alcohol abuse disorder.

Only North Carolina’s medical board made the information public and ultimately forced him to deactivate his license.

The story of Dr. Davidson’s license in both states illustrates the stark difference in how each state regulates doctors.

In North Carolina, the public can access the details of their doctor’s discipline history, if there is one. But state law leaves the public largely in the dark in South Carolina.

This is the first in a series of stories from WBTV investigating how doctors in both states are regulated and what happens to patients when the system fails to hold providers able.

15 patients claim malpractice

When Burriss came home after her surgery on December 29, 2017—a surgery she’d had because she wasn’t able to walk correctly—she said she stumbled and fell as her legs stopped working at the door of her home.

“I was shocked,” she recalled later. “You think if you have surgery, you go in and you should be fixed.”

Dr. Davidson wasn’t there when she returned to Anderson Neurosurgery to figure out what was going on. She’d never spoken to him apart from his brief and hurried introduction just before she went under anesthesia in her first surgery. She thought it was odd he wasn’t there now.

About six months later, she had to have a second surgery.

Months later, Burriss became one of fifteen patients – many of whom, including herself, received settlements—to file medical malpractice lawsuits against Dr. Davidson for operating on them while struggling with alcohol addiction.

One lawsuit alleges Dr. Davidson didn’t stop practicing until January of 2018, weeks after he’d been charged with drunk driving.

AnMed s and other doctors, the suit alleges, physically stopped him mid-operation after staff ed them because he had stumbled into the operating room, unable to turn the doorknob.

In another lawsuit, Dr. Davidson was accused of cutting a carotid artery during a spinal fusion surgery, leading to extreme blood loss and leaving the patient with permanent damage to her ability to eat, speak and move her arm.

Two out-of-state licensed doctors submitted affidavits in the case, testifying under oath that they had reviewed the patients’ medical records and believed medical negligence caused or contributed to the injuries.

AnMed Health’s attorneys acknowledged in separate court records that Dr. Davidson had indeed been diagnosed with an alcohol use disorder and relapsed in 2016, that he relapsed in 2017 to the point that he was drinking daily when not on call, and that he was charged for driving while under the influence.

But they denied that he was ever under the influence when operating on patients.

They did not dispute the facts of the patient’s medical record about what happened during surgery but denied that his care had been negligent, incompetent or that the injuries were a result of the hospital’s own negligence in allowing Dr. Davidson to practice.

After two years of back and forth in the courts, the hospital settled to the tune of $1 million. The settlement didn’t require them to it negligence.

It’s one of the few settlements for Dr. Davidson where the were made public.

Doctor’s past shielded from public view

When you search for Dr. Larry Davidson in South Carolina’s public licensee lookup online, his license comes back a clean slate.

There’s no record of a DUI charge.

No record of facing more than a dozen malpractice lawsuits.

No record that he can no longer practice in North Carolina. The N.C. medical board asked him to deactivate his license two years ago because he twice violated an order to seek help for substance abuse and abstain from alcohol.

If the South Carolina medical board has investigated him or issued a private reprimand, it doesn’t appear on his active license and the laws don’t require them to disclose it.

“This certifies that the above licensee is in good standing,” his licensee page in South Carolina reads.

Court records allege AnMed Health quietly let him go in the wake of his relapse, allowing him to resign in lieu of termination after putting him on leave. Different court records allege he was fired.

In a statement to WBTV, a spokesperson for AnMed Health said they could not comment on pending litigation, settlements or employment matters.

“We can tell you that we’ve taken necessary steps, including fulfilling all reporting obligations in of our top priority of providing quality health care to the communities we serve,” the statement read.

Today, he practices at the Carolina Pines Medical Group in South Carolina. Neither he nor his employer responded to several phone and email requests for comment.

State laws restrict public information

Dr. Davidson’s complicated history as a neurosurgeon is far from the only secret South Carolina keeps from the public.

A detailed WBTV analysis of both North Carolina and South Carolina disciplinary records reveals major differences in how much information each board shares with the public.

In case after case reviewed by WBTV where doctors held licenses in both South and North Carolina, South Carolina’s medical board withheld key disciplinary information or medical malpractice settlements that North Carolina released to the public.

In both states, license revocations and suspensions are public orders – but the law gives plenty of room for private reprimands.

In North Carolina, licensees are asked to report medical malpractice settlements against them – and those are then reported to the public. Criminal convictions are, in most cases, also documented on NC public licenses.

South Carolina employs neither of those practices.

A spokesperson for the S.C. Medical Board of Examiners said South Carolina’s laws are much more restrictive than North Carolina in what they allow the board to reveal to the public.

“Complaints and investigations of physicians are confidential under the Practice Act,” spokesperson Holly Beeson said in an email.

“At the conclusion of an investigation, only public orders of reprimand are permitted to be made public. All other disciplinary decisions must remain confidential under state law.”

The law also doesn’t allow the board to publicly post private letters of reprimand, Beeson noted. (Her full statement is at the bottom of this article.)

North Carolina far outpaces SC in public discipline of doctors

South Carolina’s medical board ranks fifth from last in a new report from Public Citizen, a national nonprofit that has been tracking and researching medical boards for years.

“The system as it stands right now unfortunately is not catered to protect the public,” said Azza AbuDagga, a medical researcher with Public Citizen who has been widely cited in national reporting for her work studying medical boards.

“What it boils down to is simply that the boards are not acting, they’re not willing to stop, to actually proactively look at problematic doctors.”

A WBTV analysis of publicly available data found North Carolina publicly disciplined doctors for misconduct at a rate of 4 to 8 times as often as South Carolina, when the number of licensees in each state was factored in.

South Carolina’s board of medical examiners issued just 13 disciplinary public orders last year, compared to North Carolina’s 204 public disciplinary orders.

In 2022, the SC board issued 23 disciplinary orders compared to North Carolina’s 175.

When a doctor does face public discipline in South Carolina, rarely does the board provide any information about what happened. Last year, only four of the 13 public disciplinary orders included details about why the doctor faced sanctions.

The spokesperson for South Carolina’s board said that was because state law allows a temporary suspension to be made public, not the details associated with the investigation.

When a doctor faces discipline in North Carolina, the public can generally tell from the public order whether it was for sexual misconduct, substance abuse, or some other issue.

Today Dr. Davidson continues to practice as a spinal surgeon, now at Carolina Pines Regional Center in South Carolina.

If his patients look him up in South Carolina’s licensee database, they wouldn’t know his history.

Three attempts to Dr. Davidson and his employer over email went unanswered.

“It upsets me,” Burriss said with reflection.

“The public should know.”

Photojournalists Corey Schmidt and Allison Fields contributed to this report.

Full statement from South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation:

The South Carolina Medical Practice Act strictly limits the disclosure of disciplinary information involving physicians. Complaints and investigations of physicians are confidential under the Practice Act. At the conclusion of an investigation, only public orders of reprimand are permitted to be made public. All other disciplinary decisions must remain confidential under state law.

Unlike NC, which permits the public disclosure of non-disciplinary letters of concern against physicians, South Carolina law prohibits the disclosure of letters of caution in physician disciplinary matters. Similarly, the existence of an Order of Temporary Suspension is public knowledge under state law, but no facts may be made available to the public because there is still an ongoing investigation that remains confidential pursuant to the Practice Act.

Finally, in the case of any licensee under the Medical Practice Act who has a substance abuse or mental health problem, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services istration (“SAMHSA”) and federal law prohibits disclosure of diagnoses, treatments, relapses, etc. The South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation contracts with the South Carolina Recovering Professionals Program to ensure that physicians who have mental health or substance abuse issues are compliant with any requirements imposed upon the licensees to maintain their safety to practice.

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