SACRAMENTO — For the first time, the California Medical Board agreed Friday to give patients access to a broad array of information about their doctors, including legal and disciplinary actions for poor medical treatment.

The physician-dominated board voted to give consumers information about their doctors, ranging from malpractice judgments exceeding $30,000 to felony convictions to loss of hospital privileges. The board's staff is expected to begin making the disclosures by midsummer, although whether the information will be available over the phone or in writing is undecided.

The 9-4 decision, which gives California one of the most liberal physician disclosure policies in the nation, was a dramatic departure from the board's current practice of revealing only the status of a doctor's license and any recent disciplinary action taken by the medical board.

It was a major victory for Gov. Pete Wilson and consumer advocates, who have pressured the board for months to allow wider disclosure of information about doctors. The California Medical Assn. opposed some of the new disclosure provisions.

Calling it the first "shred of true consumer protection" approved by the board in recent years, consumer advocate Julianne D'Angelo said the decision showed that the panel had finally recognized the vast changes that have occurred in the doctor-patient relationship in America in the last few decades.

"In our health care setting today we don't have Dr. Marcus Welby, who has been a physician we have known for years," said D'Angelo, supervising attorney for the University of San Diego's Center for Public Interest Law. "We go to an HMO and we might not know who we are going to see. We need quick information on doctors and we are entitled to quick information on doctors from the public agency that is suppose to protect us."

The panel's action was the most controversial part of a package of doctor disciplinary reforms that had been advocated by the Wilson Administration, several board members and Dixon Arnett, its newly appointed executive director.

The board also voted to establish a rigid system of priorities for handling doctor disciplinary cases and to give itself the power to levy fines and issue citations and public warnings against physicians who are found guilty of minor infractions. This would give the board a wider range of tools for reprimand short of revoking a medical license.