The disciplinary actions available to the Texas Medical Board for application to physicians run a gamut. Among the lowest responses, the board may decide upon in response to a complaint against a medical professional’s license is the Remedial Plan. Such a plan, which is put to the physician for review and either acceptance or rejection, is considered corrective—but the Board does not consider a Remedial Plan to be a de facto disciplinary action. Remedial Plans are not reported in the Board’s newsletter, nor do they get passed on to the National Practitioner Data Bank. But they are public documents that appear on the Texas Medical Board profile of the physician. They are available to view by both potential employers and patients, and as such, they have a very real chance of negatively influencing the course of a physician’s career from the moment they are agreed to.
Generally, Remedial Plans are offered either before or after a so-called Informal Settlement Conference (which are more consequential than their name would imply). These Plans are only available in cases involving minor administrative violations—such as to physicians who have unintentionally violated Board rules on the maintenance of medical records, or to those who have failed to meet the cutoff date for taking their mandatory continuing medical education courses.
Importantly, such Remedial Plans may not, according to 9 Tex. Admin. Code §187.9, be offered in the case of patient death or when a physician has committed a felony, nor when a physician has engaged in improper relations—either sexual or financial—with a patient.
As such, a Remedial Plan’s scope of correction is similarly limited. It may not include any provision that either “revokes, suspends, limits, or restricts a person’s license or other authorization to practice medicine;” or “assesses an administrative penalty against a person.”
Nonetheless, because of the public nature of a Remedial Plan, any physician or medical professional who is offered one by the Board should contact an experienced medical license defense attorney before either accepting or rejecting the offered Plan.
If you have been offered a Remedial Plan by the Texas Medical Board, BERTOLINO LLP can help. We are experienced license defense attorneys and we know how to navigate the complaint process. We are skilled at assisting medical professionals in determining whether accepting or rejecting the proposed Plan will be beneficial or detrimental to your career, depending on the particular allegations. Immediately consulting an experienced license defense attorney to review allegations of misconduct helps ensure the most favorable outcome in your case.
With offices in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, we serve clients all over the state. Contact us today or call (512) 476-5757 and schedule a case evaluation.
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