Monitoring Program to Combine Health Professions

January 28, 2010 -- Medical licensing boards in Oregon will no longer operate their own substance abuse and mental health monitoring programs beginning in July.

 

That’s when the state’s new Health Professionals Program under the Addictions and Mental Health Division of the Department of Human Services will take over a new consolidated program.

 

The new program will incorporate physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, social workers and professional counselors with substance abuse or mental health issues who either enroll voluntarily or through their licensing boards. DHS expects to enroll between 500 and 600 people.

 

Other groups such as chiropractors and psychologists are not yet included, but their licensing boards could choose to participate in the future, said Karen Wheeler, director of addiction services.

 

Although the division does not administer any similar program, Wheeler said the task is by no means foreign. “We are obviously the authority on addictions as well as mental health,” Wheeler said.

 

She said government has a responsibility to run such a program because public safety could be at risk.

 

“When people’s lives are at stake and they’re accessing healthcare services, you want a work force that’s very focused and alert and not impaired so that people don’t get hurt or ultimately killed,” Wheeler said.

 

The state also needs as many healthcare providers as it can get, so it’s worth spending resources to rehabilitate those who might otherwise lose their job because of impairment.

 

This week the state issued a request for proposals to administer the monitoring program by an outside contractor. When the legislature approved the move last year, a fiscal impact statement said the program would cost between $600,000-$700,000. But Wheeler said it would likely cost more. Along with public funding, enrollees would be required to pay some of the costs of the program.

 

The transition from individual professional boards operating monitoring programs to one consolidated program came in part from an investigation in 2006 by Portland Tribune journalist Peter Korn, who reported the Board of Nursing had protected nurses who failed its monitoring program.

 

A year later in 2007 at the Board of Medical Examiners, longtime advisory board member Dr. Andy Antoniskas resigned over concerns that the BME was moving to infringe on confidentiality requirements with its monitoring program. Antoniskas later made his concerns known to the legislature.

 

The confidentiality issue has historically been contentious. Medical professionals who enroll in a board-sanctioned treatment program voluntarily can expect to remain anonymous to their licensing board as long as the enrollee completes the program. If not, the licensing board can be notified.

 

Darcy Edwards, PhD, manager of the new Health Professionals Program, said the new structure would be centralized, standardized and consistent.

 

“Essentially. It’s not people who have worked together,” Edwards said. “It’s not a nurse overseeing another nurse. That’s something that ‘s really going to give us accountability.”