South Carolina is among the 10 worst states in protecting patients from dangerous doctors, according to a nonprofit consumer group's annual ranking of state medical boards.

Public Citizen's Health Research Group based its rankings on the number of serious actions taken against doctors between 2003 and 2005 as reported to the Federation of State Medical Boards.

Serious actions were defined as license revocations, suspensions, and probation or other restrictions on practice.

The rates ranged from a low of 1.62 serious actions per 1,000 doctors for Mississippi to 9.08 per 1,000 doctors for Kentucky. South Carolina's rate was 2.06.

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"The only explanation for five-fold differences is that the boards in the top are doing a better job of carrying out their state Medical Practice Act," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's.

"There is not a shred of evidence that the quality of doctors overall is any different in any state," Wolfe said.

Board of Medical Examiners spokesman Jim Knight said no one was available to comment without reviewing the report.

But South Carolina Medical Association President Dr. Gerald A. Wilson, reached at the annual medical convention, said the board is doing a "reasonably good job" given that its nine members are stretched thin and there is always a need for more members.

Wilson added that the state board is working to improve and making more of an effort to follow up and investigate complaints.

The board is working on making sure discipline of physicians is being handled properly and "as part of a review of our Medical Practice Act is in process of revamping how complaints are made public," he said. "Any complaint filed against a physician would have an initial investigation, and if found to be of merit, continued as a formal complaint, then it can be made public."

Wilson said that in the past, Public Citizen's ranking system compared apples to oranges in different states. Wolfe said that has been corrected this year by averaging actions over three years to account for the impact a few actions would have on a state with a small number of doctors.

Nationwide, medical boards took 3,255 serious disciplinary actions in 2005 compared with 3,296 actions the previous year, a decline of 1.2 percent, according to the group, based in Washington, D.C.