{ "standard": "editorial/machine-readability-standard.md", "route": "/research/program/", "title": "The KPSGILL Research Program", "compiled": "2026-09-02", "lifecycleState": "CURRENT", "approved": true, "approvalAuthority": "editorial/owner-approval-2026-08-17.json", "note": "Every item is a research question with a lifecycle state of PROPOSED. Proposed routes are shown as text, never as links, because an unbuilt route must not appear as a destination. Case-level records enter a dataset only after verification against the issuing body’s own published document; no named individual disposition is published from a secondary summary.", "clusters": [ { "id": "discipline", "name": "Medical discipline observatory", "premise": "What the Board actually does when comparable cases reach disposition — as distinct from what the machinery says it will do.", "items": [ { "n": 1, "title": "Medical Board decisions observatory", "question": "Structured records for every publicly available California final decision: identity, procedural route, conduct category, clinical nexus, aggravation, mitigation, outcome, probation burden.", "state": "PROPOSED", "codebook": "/research/medical-discipline-observatory/", "note": "Codebook published. The record set itself remains PROPOSED until its first collection increment." }, { "n": 2, "title": "Sanction variation project", "question": "Why can an apparently similar off-duty alcohol-related event produce a public reprimand for one California physician and years of monitored probation for another?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 3, "title": "One conduct, different penalties", "question": "Within a single conduct category, which factual, procedural and evidentiary variables track the difference in outcome?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 4, "title": "Penalty lab: guideline versus disposition", "question": "For each violation, the published guideline range, the actual disposition, the size of any departure, and the reason the decision-maker gave for it.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 5, "title": "ALJ decision laboratory", "question": "Across the health boards at the Office of Administrative Hearings: which mitigating and aggravating factors do administrative law judges repeatedly credit?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 6, "title": "Board versus ALJ observatory", "question": "How much deference does a board actually give its administrative judges — adopted unchanged, sanction increased, sanction reduced, findings changed, non-adopted?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 7, "title": "Defence variables observatory", "question": "Do publicly observable factors — representation, contested hearing versus stipulation, expert and treating-clinician evidence, documented rehabilitation — track departures from the default range?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 8, "title": "Charging discretion", "question": "Complaint, investigation, referral, accusation, amendment, settlement demand, hearing: how do charging choices change the penalty that becomes available?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 9, "title": "The impairment allegation", "question": "How does an alcohol-related matter charged as a conviction alone differ in consequence from the same matter charged with an impairment or practice-under-influence count?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 10, "title": "Mitigation that is actually credited", "question": "Every mitigating factor expressly credited in a final decision, extracted and counted rather than assumed.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 11, "title": "Aggravation that changes the outcome", "question": "The mirror project: which aggravating findings recur in the decisions that end in revocation or actual suspension?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 12, "title": "Probation is not one penalty", "question": "Nominal sanction versus real-world burden: obligations, testing, monitors, practice restrictions, disclosure, duration, cost.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 13, "title": "Discipline cost observatory", "question": "Investigation and enforcement costs requested and awarded, by offence and by procedural path.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 14, "title": "Rehabilitation versus punishment", "question": "When a regulator invokes public protection, what prospective risk has actually been demonstrated?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 15, "title": "Proportionality across professions", "question": "For comparable off-duty conduct, how does physician discipline compare with lawyers, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and psychologists?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 16, "title": "Fifty-state discipline atlas", "question": "One hypothetical set of facts, fifty licensing systems: burden of proof, tribunal, penalty guidelines, impairment rules, disclosure, judicial review.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 17, "title": "Board transparency index", "question": "Not due process — visibility. What can the public actually see: accusations, complete decisions, proposed decisions, votes, recusals, historical records, bulk data?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 18, "title": "Digital permanence of discipline", "question": "A sanction has three lives: the legal order, the licensing record, and the search result. When the statute says a record comes down, does the internet agree?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 19, "title": "Decision search", "question": "A structured search over public decisions: conduct plus outcome plus reasoning, rather than a list of PDFs.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 20, "title": "Precedent without precedent", "question": "Administrative decisions are largely non-precedential, yet penalty custom develops. Where does custom substitute for rule?", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "discretion", "name": "Discretion, decision rights and the administrative state", "premise": "Where written law ends and institutional judgement begins.", "items": [ { "n": 21, "title": "Who actually decides", "question": "Decision-rights maps for formulary, privileges, prior authorisation, licensure, residency selection, certification, closure, device clearance, guidelines, payment and scope.", "state": "PUBLISHED", "route": "/policy/who-actually-decides/", "note": "First published output: the decision-rights atlas. A map, not a dataset — frequencies belong to the items that collect records." }, { "n": 22, "title": "Discretion institute", "question": "Prosecutorial, regulatory, credentialing, medical-necessity, program-selection, certification and enforcement discretion, studied as one subject.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 23, "title": "Health administrative state observatory", "question": "Notice and comment, guidance, enforcement discretion, adjudication, deference after the recent doctrinal shifts, appointments, emergency authority.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 24, "title": "Licensing and the constitution", "question": "Property and liberty interests in a licence, procedural and substantive due process, compelled speech, vagueness, retroactivity, subpoena authority.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 25, "title": "Employee and licensee at once", "question": "The employed physician answers to employer, board, medical staff, payer, federal programs, carrier and certifying body. Where do those masters conflict?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 52, "title": "Settlement pressure", "question": "What rights are waived, and what record survives, when a contested hearing is traded for a stipulation?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 53, "title": "Public-protection evidence project", "question": "A standing method: whenever public protection is invoked, ask what risk was demonstrated and how.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 54, "title": "Risk versus punishment", "question": "Do sanctions correlate with any measured probability of recurrence or patient harm?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 55, "title": "Institutional power atlas", "question": "For each institution: who appoints, who funds, who can overrule, who audits, who sues, and who hears the appeal.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 56, "title": "Revolving door register", "question": "Documented transitions between regulators, agencies, systems and payers. Movement recorded; motive not imputed.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "standing", "name": "Professional standing and the career cascade", "premise": "How one event propagates through institutions that never speak to each other.", "items": [ { "n": 26, "title": "Whistleblower intelligence", "question": "False Claims Act actions, state protections, retaliation, patient-safety reporting, peer-review retaliation, compliance channels.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 27, "title": "Medical staff democracy", "question": "Do organised medical staffs retain independent governance — bylaws, elections, executive-committee authority, governing-body override, exclusive contracts?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 28, "title": "Bylaw library", "question": "Publicly available medical-staff bylaws compared on hearing rights, summary suspension, automatic relinquishment, conduct policies and panel composition.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 29, "title": "NPDB consequence observatory", "question": "What a report actually does downstream: credentialing question, payer question, licensing disclosure, employment consequence, underwriting.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 30, "title": "Credentialing exclusion filters", "question": "The screens applied before anyone reads an application: years since training, certification, claims history, gaps, probation, visa, volume.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 31, "title": "Career fragility map", "question": "One event traced through every institution that will eventually ask about it.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 32, "title": "Regulatory cascade observatory", "question": "Criminal court, board, hospital, federal data bank, payer, employer, carrier, immigration authority, other states — from a single fact.", "state": "PUBLISHED", "route": "/policy/the-regulatory-cascade/", "note": "First published output: the propagation map. A map, not a dataset — no frequency claimed." }, { "n": 33, "title": "Reputation and due process", "question": "Publication of accusations, arrests, peer-review outcomes and discipline, and the distance between accusation and adjudication.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 37, "title": "Convictions and the professional map", "question": "Arrest through prosecution, mandatory reporting, board investigation, institutional reporting, credentialing and immigration consequence — as system mechanics.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 38, "title": "Rehabilitation institute", "question": "How health regulation treats past addiction, mental illness, disability, conviction and prior discipline. When has enough rehabilitation been shown?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 39, "title": "Second-chance licensing", "question": "State-by-state treatment of the rehabilitated clinician.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 40, "title": "Ageing and cognitive screening", "question": "Age-based screening, competency testing, institutional policy, disability law, and the evidence for the tests being used.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 41, "title": "Professionalism observatory", "question": "Who defines professionalism, and what process attaches to standards written as adjectives?", "state": "PUBLISHED", "route": "/policy/professionalism-as-a-standard/", "note": "First published output: the structural analysis. The empirical question — whether and in which direction adjectival standards are applied unevenly — remains unanswered and is stated as such on the page." }, { "n": 42, "title": "Off-duty conduct and medicine", "question": "When does private life legitimately become professional regulation — across conviction, speech, domestic dispute, accusation, recorded conduct and financial conduct?", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 43, "title": "Viral governance", "question": "Institutional due process under reputational pressure: what happens to process when the audience arrives first.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 44, "title": "Physician speech", "question": "Scientific disagreement, misinformation statutes, employer restrictions, testimony, advocacy, and the First Amendment questions underneath.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 98, "title": "Portability after discipline", "question": "What happens to a physician disciplined in one state who applies in another.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 99, "title": "Compact consequence", "question": "How discipline propagates through interstate licensure compacts.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "evidence", "name": "Evidence, expertise and the record", "premise": "Who gets to say what happened, and on what basis.", "items": [ { "n": 34, "title": "Malpractice outcome analysis", "question": "Specialty, allegation, injury, standard-of-care issue, disposition where public, and the damages framework — structured, not advertised.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 35, "title": "Guidelines in litigation", "question": "Where clinical guidelines become evidence, argument, safe harbour or cross-examination material.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 36, "title": "Medicine and criminal law", "question": "Prescribing prosecutions, fraud, controlled substances, death prosecutions, certification and documentation offences.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 45, "title": "The complaint economy", "question": "Who may complain, anonymously or not, across boards, peer review, grievances, payers and hotlines — and what a complaint sets in motion.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 46, "title": "Anonymous allegation and due process", "question": "When can an anonymous allegation carry serious professional consequence?", "state": "PUBLISHED", "route": "/policy/anonymous-allegations/", "note": "First published output: the structural analysis and the corroboration threshold. Frequency and misuse rates remain unmeasured and are stated as such." }, { "n": 47, "title": "Expert accountability", "question": "Qualification, conflicts, specialty matching, compensation, review standards and accountability for erroneous opinion.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 48, "title": "The consultant system", "question": "Reviewer availability, standards, conflicts, timeliness, disagreement and anonymity in agency clinical review.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "delay", "name": "Delay, cost and access to administrative justice", "premise": "Process that is nominally available and practically out of reach.", "items": [ { "n": 49, "title": "Board delay observatory", "question": "Complaint to investigation to accusation to hearing to decision, by case type. Delay is itself a consequence.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 50, "title": "Administrative justice delay index", "question": "The same measurement across licensing boards.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 51, "title": "Cost recovery observatory", "question": "Whether cost recovery discourages the exercise of hearing rights.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "power", "name": "Rulemaking, influence and who wrote the rule", "premise": "Tracing authorship of rules that are presented as authorless.", "items": [ { "n": 57, "title": "Society influence observatory", "question": "Positions taken by professional, hospital, payer and consumer organisations, compared with the outcome.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 58, "title": "Who wrote the rule", "question": "Statute, agency draft, comments received, final text — showing which recommendations survived.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 59, "title": "Comment-letter influence", "question": "Recurring institutional positions across major federal and state rulemakings.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 60, "title": "California power map", "question": "Who regulates whom: executive, legislature, consumer affairs, the health departments, insurance regulators, the Attorney General, systems, plans, societies, unions, counties and capital.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 121, "title": "The hidden corporations", "question": "Who is actually paid when a patient sees a doctor.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 122, "title": "Contracting laboratory", "question": "Publicly available payer, hospital and government contracts, read as instruments of control.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "california", "name": "California places and the safety net", "premise": "Where policy meets a county line.", "items": [ { "n": 61, "title": "County health governance", "question": "Fifty-eight counties: hospitals, behavioural health, public health, jails, emergency services, Medi-Cal delivery, indigent care.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 62, "title": "Safety-net systems observatory", "question": "Health centres, county systems, rural clinics and public hospitals: governance, funding, workforce, access.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 63, "title": "Health-centre governance", "question": "Federal grant conditions, board composition requirements, liability coverage, drug pricing, payment methodology and clinical authority.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 64, "title": "Drug-discount programme observatory", "question": "Covered entities, contract pharmacies, manufacturer disputes, litigation, and the patient-benefit question.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 65, "title": "Nonprofit hospital accountability", "question": "Exemption against community benefit, executive pay, charity care, pricing, collections and service closure.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 66, "title": "Compensation and community benefit", "question": "Public filings read side by side.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 67, "title": "Charity-care observatory", "question": "What hospitals promise against what they provide.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 68, "title": "Facility fee atlas", "question": "The same billed service, mapped by site of care and ownership.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 69, "title": "Debt collection atlas", "question": "Which systems sue patients, under which written policy.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "coverage", "name": "Coverage, payers and middlemen", "premise": "The layer patients are billed by and cannot see.", "items": [ { "n": 70, "title": "Appeals outcome database", "question": "Denial, appeal, external review, reversal — wherever public data permit the comparison.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 71, "title": "Medical necessity criteria library", "question": "Published payer criteria for the same service, compared.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 72, "title": "Payer policy change tracker", "question": "Clinical policy updates that function as regulation without rulemaking.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 73, "title": "Prior authorisation burden", "question": "By drug and by procedure, concretely.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 74, "title": "Formulary churn tracker", "question": "Which medicines change tier or exclusion, and when.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 75, "title": "Benefit-manager ownership graph", "question": "Manufacturer, benefit manager, insurer, pharmacy and specialty pharmacy in one diagram.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 76, "title": "Practice acquisition tracker", "question": "Independent practices, acquired.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 77, "title": "Exit tracker", "question": "Who buys the asset five years later.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 78, "title": "Corporate structure library", "question": "Publicly documented professional-corporation architectures, read against the corporate-practice doctrine.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 79, "title": "Management agreement clauses", "question": "Control terms exposed in public litigation.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 80, "title": "Bankruptcy aftermath", "question": "Wages, continuity of care, contracts, asset sales, ownership, licences and closures after a filing.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 118, "title": "Medication access journey", "question": "Prescription, pharmacy, formulary, authorisation, benefit manager, denial, appeal.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 119, "title": "Why this costs so much", "question": "Imaging, emergency visit, insulin, ambulance, admission, specialty drug, laboratory — each payment layer named.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 120, "title": "Middlemen atlas", "question": "Benefit managers, administrators, purchasing organisations, clearinghouses and utilisation vendors.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "facilities", "name": "Facilities, closures and delegated care", "premise": "Where services stop existing, and who is responsible when the state contracts them out.", "items": [ { "n": 81, "title": "Service-line closure atlas", "question": "Obstetrics, behavioural health, trauma, paediatrics, dialysis, oncology.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 82, "title": "Maternity desert dynamics", "question": "Why obstetric units close while demand persists.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 83, "title": "Emergency boarding dashboard", "question": "Where state data allow the measurement.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 84, "title": "Response and diversion", "question": "Emergency response and hospital diversion as local policy.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 85, "title": "Correctional contractor database", "question": "Contracts, jurisdictions, ownership, litigation, findings, accreditation and enforcement history.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 86, "title": "Deaths in custody registry", "question": "Structured and source-driven. Causation never inferred from sequence.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 87, "title": "Jail healthcare contract library", "question": "Staffing requirements, penalties, indemnification, quality metrics and mortality review.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 88, "title": "Delegated clinical function", "question": "What happens when the state contracts out clinical judgement but keeps constitutional responsibility.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "pipeline", "name": "The training pipeline and physician immigration", "premise": "Four datasets the institute has already named as missing.", "items": [ { "n": 89, "title": "Residency visa transparency database", "question": "Programme, specialty, sponsorship, examination and graduation cutoffs, experience requirements, with a source date on every field.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 90, "title": "Programme transparency index", "question": "Not a quality ranking. A disclosure ranking.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 91, "title": "Opportunity database", "question": "Verified electives, observerships and research positions, with eligibility, fees and sponsorship. No paid listings.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 92, "title": "Application waste calculator", "question": "Applications submitted to programmes whose own published screen excludes the applicant.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 93, "title": "Filtering observatory", "question": "Which filters remove an applicant before any holistic review occurs.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 94, "title": "Training money map", "question": "Who finances residency, and through which appropriation.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 95, "title": "Slot expansion tracker", "question": "Which states and institutions are actually creating positions.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 96, "title": "Visa workforce map", "question": "Waiver physicians by geography, where public data permit.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 97, "title": "Alternative licensure tracker", "question": "Fifty-state legislation and implementation for internationally trained physicians.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "ai", "name": "Machine decisions, devices and evidence integrity", "premise": "Accountability for systems that produce clinical text and coverage outcomes.", "items": [ { "n": 100, "title": "Incident registry", "question": "Documented healthcare failures: bias, fabricated text, erroneous denial, diagnostic error, security, model drift. Documented cases only.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 101, "title": "Clinical provenance project", "question": "Who generated the text, who edited it, who adopted it, and who bears the consequence.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 102, "title": "Scribe contract observatory", "question": "Vendor terms on data use, retention, training, privacy, indemnification and physician attestation.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 103, "title": "The device boundary", "question": "Systems inside device regulation and systems outside it.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 104, "title": "Algorithmic coverage registry", "question": "Public action and litigation involving automated coverage decisions.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 105, "title": "Evidence quality scorecard", "question": "Prospective validation, external validation, trial evidence, post-market monitoring, subgroup analysis.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 106, "title": "Device failure timeline", "question": "Clearance, signal, recall, litigation.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 107, "title": "Warning-letter network", "question": "Company histories and recurring findings.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 108, "title": "Trial noncompliance registry", "question": "Sponsor and institution patterns in results reporting.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 109, "title": "Retraction tracker", "question": "High-impact clinical retractions and their guideline consequences.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 110, "title": "Evidence lag observatory", "question": "Evidence to guideline to coverage to practice, measured in years.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 111, "title": "Guideline politics", "question": "Conflicts, panel composition, evidence quality and strength of recommendation.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 112, "title": "Consensus evolution", "question": "Where clinical consensus reversed, and what the reversal cost.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 113, "title": "What medicine got wrong", "question": "Abandoned procedures, withdrawn medicines, reversed screening, and the policy that followed each.", "state": "PROPOSED" } ] }, { "id": "harm", "name": "Safety, harm and administrative injury", "premise": "Harm that arrives through paperwork rather than through medicine.", "items": [ { "n": 114, "title": "Regulatory failure case studies", "question": "Signal, missed opportunity, harm, investigation, reform.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 115, "title": "Never-event transparency", "question": "Where data permit publication.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 116, "title": "Diagnostic delay observatory", "question": "System failure rather than individual fault.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 117, "title": "Referral failure observatory", "question": "Where coordination structurally breaks.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 123, "title": "Medical economics for physicians", "question": "Relative value units, conversion factors, capitation, shared savings, risk adjustment, facility fees and payment groupings, explained.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 124, "title": "Productivity surveillance", "question": "How employers measure physicians, and what the measurement changes.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 125, "title": "Metric gaming observatory", "question": "Documented incentives to improve the measure rather than the care.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 126, "title": "Small practice survival", "question": "Reimbursement, security costs, credentialing, authorisation, records, malpractice, staffing, rent, compliance.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 127, "title": "Independence versus consolidation", "question": "The economic comparison, done honestly.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 128, "title": "The cost of being a physician", "question": "Training, licensure, registration, certification, education, malpractice, credentialing, dues.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 129, "title": "Patient time as cost", "question": "Travel, waiting, authorisation, referral delay, appeals, paperwork.", "state": "PROPOSED" }, { "n": 130, "title": "Administrative harm", "question": "Harm arising from delay, denial, paperwork, credentialing error, network error, automated decision and regulatory lag.", "state": "PUBLISHED", "route": "/policy/administrative-harm/", "note": "First published output: the eight-mechanism taxonomy. A taxonomy for measurement — no frequency claimed." } ] } ], "counts": { "clusters": 12, "items": 130 }, "flagship": { "name": "California Medical Discipline Observatory", "firstDataset": "California alcohol-related physician discipline", "researchQuestion": "Why can an apparently similar off-duty alcohol-related event result in a public reprimand for one California physician and years of monitored probation for another?", "refusedThesis": "The observatory does not open with the claim that discipline is arbitrary. That proposition is not established by the public record, and it is not the interesting question.", "method": [ "code the charge selection", "code the facts the decision-maker found", "code representation and procedural route", "code the evidence that reached the decision-maker", "code the reasoning given for any departure from the published range", "code the final action and its burden" ], "guardrails": [ "no named individual outcome published from a secondary summary", "every record verified against the issuing body’s published document", "allegation distinguished from finding in every field", "no correlation reported as cause" ], "codebook": "/research/medical-discipline-observatory/" }, "dateModified": "2026-09-02", "tranches": { "two": { "name": "Analytic items requiring no new record collection", "items": [ 21, 32, 130, 41, 46 ], "state": "COMPLETE", "completed": "2026-09-02", "note": "Five items published as five policy analyses: who actually decides, the regulatory cascade, administrative harm, professionalism as a standard, anonymous allegations. Each is a map or taxonomy; none claims a frequency." } } }