Health License Defense

Texas Board of Acupuncture Examiners

Board Meeting

June 6 2008

Licensure Committee

Two applicants were requested to appear before the Board.

The first applicant:

• - Failed to note his second arrest on his application
• - Arrest was for speeding on a motor cycle, illegal lane change.
• - Assumed it was going to be expunged by the age of 21 and forgot about it.
• - 2 arrests showed up on DPS record.

Options:

• - approve anyways
• - determine ineligible
• - Restrict License
• - With draw, re apply with application fees

The committee voted to recommend he receive an unrestricted license.  Motion passed.

Ms. Kumbo

• - October 2007determined ineligible to blindness.
• - December 2007 Requested hearing
• - February 2007 Hearing
• - She did travel to Japan in 2006to continue her studies. She also had a reader come in for the written part of the exam (herbal)

Problems and concerns expressed by the members: 

• - Travel
• - Patient Selection
• - How would she be able to tell if her area is completely sterile?
• - How would she be able to read patients faces/ reactions? (Said she checks there pulse after every needle insertion, always in the room.)
• - How does she distribute RX’s? In the video she did not use any gloves, handed over the bag with only verbal instruction. (Claims she always gives written instruction.)
• - How does she react, deal with patients pointing and gesturing to problem areas? (no answer)
• - In the video, she asked the patient to let her know if there is any blood when she removed the needles. (Mr. Ho mentions that this should not be the job of the patient. )
• - Video shows he reusing the same cotton ball - she claims again, video editing.
• - Mr. Cline agrees the video is good- and agrees that it is not uncommon to not use gloves.
• - She did finally explain that when it came to knowing how sterile an area was it came down to common sense. Why would a patient come in covered in paint or grease?
• - How would she know if lids to containers got mixed up? What if there was a dead cockroach in the herbs? How would she tell?

Motion Options

• - 3 year period of group only ( after one year she could request termination)
• - Adaption to other techniques

Motion: Restricted

• - 1 year supervised (check up everything 3 months)
• - Will meet to review after one year
• - She must not work on other blind patients when using the insertion technique.
• - After 3 years if she complies with the restricted license it will naturally terminate.

For more on this see: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/07/0607acupuncture.html

Board also spoke about making guidelines for future blind applicants

Board all agreed her video was good- but with poor editing.

Education Committee

• - Brief discussion on updating visual aids (Problems with adobe)
• - Mostly discussed hours required for license. Want to change one hour of herbal to three hours. No motion was made because of lack of urgency.
• - 9hrs herbal, 3 hrs general = 12 total (Bah Chi?)

Discipline and Ethics Committee

• - Appeal of a dismissed complaint and the committee went to executive session.
• - Enforcement:
• 1. 2 active complaints ( 3 total)
• 2. 6 active legal cases currently being prosecuted.
• 3. No termination requests so far in 2008.

Remainder went to Executive Session.

Full Board

• - There are two new 2 new members, Mr. Seagal, a public member and Mr. Cline a licensee member.
• - Dr. Patrick, Directors Report - via phone recovering from surgery. He spoke about his appreciation and retiring in August 2008.
• - One Rehabilitation Order was considered-Basically had to do with an applicant with a medical condition, currently in remission. Should they continue to practice. Applicant must stay in treatment if they would like to continue. Order was adopted.
• -
• - Changes to 183 in 22 TAC:
• o Adding bio medicine to requirements to CAE.
• o Should transferring acupuncturists have to take state exam again when moving to a new state? ( Not sure what they finally decided, focused on evening the number of hours more than anything)
• o Motion: to change the three strikes on your out testing policy to changed to 5 attempts, NOT eligible after 6 or more attempts.
• o Any applicants that are over a year old are to be considered expired, not inactive.
• o Finger Print cards? Have gone back to FP cards through the DPS, FBI and school when reviewing applicants. Cost: $42. Sent to vendor w/ DPS to show background information etc.
• o Indefinite record keeping: Changed to 7 years. Keep clients records until age 21 or 7 years after last day of treatment. ( min of 7 yrs.)
• o Want to add 3 hours of Herbology, and the bio medicine.

These recommendations must first be approved by the Texas Medical Board.