If you have received a complaint notice from your Texas licensing board, you know the meaning of the word “stress.” Since the Board has likely already done some investigation into whether the complaint merits pursuing, you’re in a situation where quick and decisive action is a must. We get asked a lot of questions by clients who contact us, many of whom are reeling and feel like they may not be able to make their...
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Even when a practitioner—be they medical professional, teacher, podiatrist or architect—under investigation based on a claim is perfectly certain that the accusation is baseless, the licensing board under whose competence the claim falls is utterly in the dark on the matter. The fact is, most of these licensing boards have been charged by the legislature with protecting the public, not the licensees under their purview. Therefore, any complaint, however baseless, must be treated with complete...
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It is not uncommon for patients to file complaints against physicians before the Texas Medical Board. In fact, doctors are among the most second-guessed of the licensed professions, due to the make-or-break nature of their work. People are unforgiving when they put their health in another person’s hands. The Board receives in excess of 7,000 complaints in a given year. While the most common forms of complaints against doctors are things like misdiagnosis and delayed...
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Professional counselors in Texas are governed by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors – a subsidiary of the Department of State Health Services. Counselors are considered to be any professional who practices at the application of mental health services, psychotherapeutic services, and services using human development principles to aid people at any stage of life. The sorts of mental health intervention treatments offered by these professionals are categorized by law into four...
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When an accountant finds themselves facing a complaint before the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy (BPA), it can mean their very livelihood is at stake. And once the BPA decides that the complaint merits investigation, a file is opened by the Enforcement Division. Then the accountant has 30 days to respond with the material in their own defense. At this point, a committee will review the case and make its recommendations on what course...
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In order to ease the potential burden of time and money wasted for those with criminal conviction backgrounds—many of whom previously had to go through extensive training and license examination before knowing whether they would, in fact, be denied the license they seek for that preexisting reason—the Texas Legislature in 2009 put in place provisions to help people know before they undertook such burdens whether their criminal conviction backgrounds would end up being cause for...
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Texas dentists are regulated by the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners (TSBDE), which has the power to take disciplinary action against dentists who are found to violate the standard of care, the Dental Practice Act (DPA), or TSBDE Rules. Dental hygienists, registered dental assistants, and dental laboratories in Texas are also regulated by TSBDE. As part of this regulation, Texas dentists are subject to Texas Administrative Code Rule Sec. 108.6, which contains what is...
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The Texas Board of Nursing has enacted a Nurse Reporting System designed to further the Legislature’s initiatives on patient safety conducted under Texas Occ. Code Sec 301.1606. To do this, the Board has instituted its own set of rules that define the circumstances under which nurses are considered to have a duty to report various forms of malfeasance or error that are undermining health care systems. In Sec.301.4025, the Board allowed for a nurse to...
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New TLDR rules governing the practice of podiatry in Texas, adopted under 15 TAC, Chapter 130, went into effect on September 1, 2019. These rules are wide-ranging and have an effect on a number of different elements of practice. Perhaps the change most apparent to practitioners is the implementation of a shift from a one-year term to a two-year term for a license. Among other requirements, the new rules also: Make certain changes to ease...
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When a medical professional enters an informal settlement conference with the Texas Medical Board (pursuant to Board rule sec. 187.11), they at times arrive less prepared than they ought to be. This is likely because, given the use of the term “informal,” these professionals get the wrong impression: this informal settlement conference will be more like a trial than the word implies to the untrained ear, and will certainly proceed in a less fair fashion...
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