The Boards Need Changes To Be Fair

If you want to listen to the broadcast of the Appropriations subcommittee regarding the Texas Medical Board, go to the Texas House of Representatives and click on the 10/23/07 link. My law partner, Tim Weitz, chose to testify and you can hear his comments at about 6:64. Tim's comments are appropriate not only for the Medical Board, but also other regulatory boards such as the Texas Nursing Board.

For example, currently if a nurse(or doctor) goes to a contested case hearing with the Board at the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) and the Judge finds in favor of the nurse, the case still goes back to the Board for final determination. It has happened many times that the Board imposes their determination for that of the SOAH Judge, which means that the nurse spent money and time for the same result. The nurse's only recourse is to take the case to District Court. The fair way of resolving these cases as Tim explains to the Subcommittee is to have SOAH be the final decision maker and then either party (the health care provider or the Board) can appeal.

Another problem specific to the Texas Nursing Board is that the Board files "Formal Charges" within their agency, but this does not mean that the Board has submitted the case to SOAH and the procedure rules do not apply until the case is filed with SOAH. The main problem is that once these Formal Charges are filed, the charges are published online in the verification system. The problem with this is that the matter has not been resolved, it has not been submitted to SOAH, but it is now public knowledge.

Tim also points out ideals for regulatory agencies to follow. One of those is his statement that "Regulation does not always mean punishment." The idea that not every violation deserves regulatory action. Nurses need to pay attention to what is going on with the Medical Board because it may end up impacting nursing practice as well and if there are some legislative changes to improve the regulation of physicians, nurses need to be ready to request those changes for their agency as well.

Remember that knowledge is power and the first step for nurses to gain power in their occupation is to become knowledgeable about the laws governing the practice and then to join together to make the changes needed to fix the problems.