Nurse Licensing

September 8, 2011

Texas Medical Expert Report Ruled Constitutional

As a Texas medical doctor and Medical Malpractice attorney, I am providing this case law update and commentary.

As part of Texas’s tort reform laws, enacted by the Texas legislature in 2003, one of the requirements in order to file a medical malpractice claim, was the furnishing of a medical expert’s report within 120 days of filing the lawsuit.The 5th District Court of Appeals says that the legislation serves the state’s interest in preventing frivolous medical liability lawsuits and related health care system costs. This medical expert report requirement is also known as the Texas’ certificate-of-merit law, and is similar to many other states’ medical malpractice reform.

Recently Texas’ certificate-of-merit law passed another constitutional challenge after the 5th District Court of Appeals validated the requirement for plaintiffs to file an expert report demonstrating the merits of a medical liability case.

January 16, 2011

Sheriff Charged in Texas Nurse Whistle-Blowing Case

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A Fort Worth Nurse license attorney, I am providing the latest update to a story I had commented on involving 2 nurses in West Texas.

A state grand jury in Winkler County, Tex., has indicted the sheriff, the county attorney and a hospital administrator for their roles in orchestrating the prosecution of two whistle-blowing nurses after they had reported allegations of malpractice.

The sheriff, Robert L. Roberts Jr., and county attorney, Scott M. Tidwell, each face six counts, including misuse of official information and retaliation, which are third-degree felonies. Stan Wiley, the administrator of Winkler County Memorial Hospital, in the West Texas town of Kermit, was indicted on two counts of retaliation.

Read full story here at the New York Times.

November 10, 2010

Texas Medical Board Disciplines 77 Doctors

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fort Worth Texas Medical License Defense Attorney I am writing to update the following actions by the Texas Medical Board.

The Texas Medical Board met October 28-29, 2010. Since its August 26-27 board meeting, the Texas Medical Board has taken disciplinary action against 77 licensed physicians. The actions included 11 violations based on quality of care; 9 violations based on unprofessional conduct; 4 based on other states’ action; 1 based on peer review actions; 1 based on criminal convictions; 8 voluntary surrenders; 1 suspension; 3 revocations; 10 based on inadequate medical records; 1 based on inadequate supervision; 18 corrective orders; 1 cease and desist order; and 10 orders for minor statutory violations.

If you have been subjected to a TMB Inquiry Letter or TMB Disciplinary Process, then please contact the Fort Worth Texas Medical License Defense Attorney Dr. Shezad Malik. For a no obligation, free case analysis, please call 214-390-3189 or Contact Me Online.

July 25, 2010

Regulations May Allow Convicted Nurses to Cross State Lines for Work.

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Under the headline “Bad Nurses Able To Keep Working In Other States,” USA Today (7/15, Weber, Ornstein) carries an article and interactive map by the independent reporting organization ProPublica that explain how nurses can slip from one state to another for work even if they have felony drug convictions.

The report opens with the case of a nurse who “was fired from a hospital in Wausau, Wis., in 2007 after stealing the powerful painkiller Dilaudid,” was convicted of felony drug charges, and later managed to “get a job as a traveling nurse at a hospital 1,200 miles away in New Bern, N.C.” According to ProPublica, this case “illustrates significant gaps in regulatory efforts nationwide” to keep track of nurses’ misconduct. The report examines applicable licensing issues and agreements that it says perpetuate the problem.

Read the USA Today Article here.

July 24, 2010

Troubled Nurses Skip from State to State Under Compact

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Gaps in regulatory efforts nationwide allow nurses from avoiding the consequences of misconduct by hopping across state lines. Compacts created to help get good nurses to areas where they are needed most recognize a license obtained in a nurse’s home state in the other compact states.

But an investigation by ProPublica found that the pact also has allowed nurses with records of misconduct to put patients in jeopardy. In some cases, nurses have retained clean multistate licenses after at least one compact state had banned them. They have ignored their patients’ needs, stolen their pain medication, forgotten crucial tests or missed changes in their condition, records show. Tracy Weber Charles Ornstein by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, ProPublica 07/15/2010
Read Article: ProPublica

July 7, 2010

Suit Alleging PA Board of Nursing Discriminates Against Heroin Addicts

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The Legal Intelligencer (6/22, Duffy) reports, “In a groundbreaking case that could help to define the rights of recovering drug addicts, a federal judge in Scranton has ruled that the Pennsylvania Board of Nursing must answer a lawsuit that says the agency has a secret, unwritten policy that forbids any nurse from holding a license while receiving methadone treatment for a chronic opioid addiction.

Requiring nurses who are recovering from heroin addiction to prove that they are ‘weaned’ from methadone may be found to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, US District Judge James M. Munley held in Reynolds v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

Read full story here.

June 28, 2010

Thousands of Nurses Punished by Other States Maintain Licenses in California.

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The Los Angeles Times (6/28, Weber, Ornstein) reports that California’s “Board of Registered Nursing has discovered that some 3,500 of its nurses have been punished for misconduct by other states — hundreds even had their licenses revoked — while maintaining clean licenses in California.”

Now, “as many as 2,000 of these nurses…will face discipline in California, officials estimate.” According to the Times, “The board’s discovery was prompted by a Times/ProPublica investigation last year that found hundreds of instances in which California nurses had been sanctioned elsewhere for sexual abuse, neglect, rampant drug use and criminality but could work freely in California.”

February 10, 2010

Texas Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor Malpractice

by Dr. Shezad Malik

It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

Read the full story at the New York Times

August 3, 2009

Update: Retaliation Against West Texas Nurses for Whistle Blower Complaint

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Two West Texas nurses have been fired from their jobs and indicted with a third-degree felony carrying potential penalties of two-to-ten years’ imprisonment and a maximum fine of $10,000.

The nurses, in their 50s and both members of the American Nurses Association/Texas Nurses Association, reported concerns about a doctor practicing at Winkler County Memorial Hospital in Kermit.

They alleged that the doctor improperly encouraging patients in the hospital emergency department and in the rural health clinic to buy his own herbal “medicines,” and they thought it improper for him to take hospital supplies to perform a procedure at a patient’s home rather than in the hospital.

Read an earlier post.http://www.bne.state.tx.us/

July 20, 2009

Texas Nurses Face Charges After Filing TMB Complaint

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Two West Texas nurses have been indicted after filing an anonymous complaint about a doctor’s practices with the Texas Medical Board, but the state agency says the women did nothing wrong.

The nurses are charged with misuse of official information. Each one-page indictment filed against them alleges they improperly accessed information that was not public “with intent to harm” the doctor for “a nongovernmental purpose.”

Among the nurses’ complaints were that the doctor improperly encouraged patients to buy herbal medicines from him and had wanted to use hospital supplies to perform a procedure at a patient’s home.

The Texas Medical Board defended the nurses’ actions and said it’s the board’s state-mandated duty to look into such complaints.