ROUNDS
Ray Callas, MD, chair of TMA’s Council on Legislation, testified in December before the Sunset Advisory Commission on the Texas Medical Board and the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
Sunset review of TMB fails to address disciplinary process improvements
IN COMMENTS TO THE Sunset Advisory Commission on its 2016–17 review of the Texas Medical Board (TMB), the Texas Medical Association says one im- portant matter is disappointingly absent from the agency’s thorough and de- tailed report: improving TMB’s disciplinary process. While TMA generally supports the sunset staff’s report, the association says more could be done to
PHOTO BY JIM LINCOLN
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ensure effective operations at the medical board. To read the comment letter, visit tma.tips/TMAsunsetletter. The Texas Legislature is currently considering the sunset commission’s recommendations as it determines whether to extend the life of TMB for 12 more years and what changes to make in the agency’s operations. Vis- it the Sunset Advisory Commission website,
www.sunset.texas.gov, to ac- cess the full report and the agency’s recommendations. For more about TMA’s call for fair TMB informal dis- ciplinary hearings, read “On Trial” in
the November issue of Texas Medi- cine, pages 28–35, or visit www.tex
med.org/TMBDiscipline. In the comment letter, TMA asks the sunset staff to reexamine the board’s disciplinary process and pro- vides these specific recommendations for improvement:
• Require the board to remove pub- lication of a physician’s remedial plan after the passage of time. TMA says publishing the information for an indefinite amount of time has a “punitive effect, because something as simple as an administrative error becomes a permanent blemish on a physician’s profile.”
• Remove the lifetime limitation of remedial plans. TMA says doing so would “allow both the licensee and the board to avoid the expense of protracted investigations for minor administrative violations ...”
• Require the board to provide all February 2017 TEXAS MEDICINE 21
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