Despite polygraphs being inadmissible in courts and being considered either full on junk science or just north of that mark, the federation of state physician health programs (FSPHP) and its member state physician health programs (PHPs) are routinely sending physicians to evaluation centers that employ polygraphs. And get this: These centers charge hundreds of dollars for a polygraph, and if a physician doesn’t pass the test, guess what? They can retake it until they eventually pass–as long as they pay for each and every time they took the polygraph.
And as troubling, FSPHP and state PHPs have bidirectional financial relationships–i.e. serious conflicts of interest–with the centers that they’re referring physicians to that are using polygraphs.
Why does this practice copntinue? Because almost no physicians know anything about PHPs or the evaluation/treatment centers that they utilize until they’ve been referred to a PHP. And once that happens and they see what is actually transpiring, if a physician then registers complaints, they’re seen as bellyaching and in denial about their issues, as opposed to perhaps having very real, legitimate complaints.
See my article in Psychology Today here about this bizarre, little known, sad, and unfair state of affairs.