Bend’s Volunteers in Medicine clinic and Oregon’s board that regulates doctors are engaged in a tractor pull over the licensing of retired doctors.

The VIM clinic can’t treat everybody it would like to because it doesn’t have enough doctors. Dr. Ronald Carver, a member of the clinic’s board, has been urging the state board to loosen restrictions, allowing more retired doctors to practice. But the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners doesn’t want to drop its certification standards just because doctors would be working for a nonprofit.

We think the state board should be moving in the same direction as Carver.

The Volunteers in Medicine Clinic of the Cascades opened to patients in March 2004. The clinic’s volunteers provide medical care to Deschutes County residents who aren’t covered by insurance and are poor. It’s served thousands of people and helps to fill an important gap in care. Some 600,000 Oregonians are uninsured and about 100,000 of them are children.

Carver has asked the state board for licensing changes for about the past four years. He wants the board to allow doctors that have an active medical license in good standing and who have practiced during the last two years to be able to skip the Oregon paperwork, according to Oregon Health News, a newsletter. He said the doctors would only be permitted to work for nonprofits and only under the supervision of a doctor with an active license.

Carver believes the current licensing system is a barrier to care. He gives the example of Dr. Robert Collins, the former head of the neurology department at UCLA, a top medical school. Collins retired to Sisters and wanted to volunteer at the VIM clinic. It took him more than a year to get licensed in Oregon, Carver said. That’s because the state board requires original documentation for licensing and that can be hard to track down.

Kathleen Haley, executive director of the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners, is a fan of what the VIM clinic does. But she said the state board does not want to apply a lower standard to volunteer doctors.

We can understand the state board’s reluctance to apply different standards to volunteer doctors. The fact is Oregon already has a two-tier system for health care. There are those who can afford it and 600,000 people who are uninsured. The uninsured need doctors too. We doubt there will be a herd of retired doctors trying to get approval to volunteer their time.

The state board should find a way to implement Carver’s proposal. If the board doesn’t, Central Oregon legislators should push for a bill that will.