Table of Contents
Appendix E

Appendix D - Strengthening Consumer Protection: Priorities for Health Care Workforce Regulation

Excerpts from the Summary of Recommendations, Strengthening Consumer Protection: Priorities for Health Care Workforce Regulation - Taskforce on Health Care Workforce Regulation (1998)

REGULATORY BOARDS AND GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES

Recommendation 1 Congress should establish a national policy advisory body that will research, develop and publish national scopes of practice and continuing competency standards for state legislatures to implement.

Recommendation 2

States should require policy oversight and coordination for professional regulation at the state level. This could be accomplished by the creation of an oversight board composed of a majority of public members or it could become the expanded responsibility of an existing agency with oversight authority. This policy coordinating body should be responsible for general oversight of the state's health licensing boards and for assuring the integration of professional regulation with other state consumer regulatory efforts (e.g. health facility and health plan regulation).

Recommendation 3

Individual professional boards in the states must be accountable to the public by significantly increasing the representation of public, non-professional members. Public representation should be at least one-third of each professional board.
Recommendation 4 States should require professional boards to provide practice-relevant information about their licensees to the public in a clear and comprehensible manner. Legislators should also work to change laws that prohibit the disclosure of malpractice settlements and other relevant practice concerns to the public.

Recommendation 5

States should provide the resources necessary to adequately staff and equip all health professions boards to meet their responsibilities expeditiously, efficiently and effectively.

Recommendation 6

Congress should enact legislation that facilitates professional mobility and practice across state boundaries.

SCOPES OF PRACTICE

Recommendation 7

The national policy advisory body recommended above develop standards, including model legislative language, for uniform scopes of practice authority for health professions. These standards and models would be based on a wide range of evidence regarding the competence of the professions to provide safe and effective health care.

Recommendation 8
States should enact and implement scopes of practice that are nationally uniform for each profession and based on the standards and models developed by the national policy advisory body.
Recommendation 9

Until national models for scopes of practice can be developed and adopted, states should explore and develop mechanisms for existing professions to evolve their existing scopes of practice and for new professions (or previously unregulated professions) to emerge. In developing such mechanism, states should be proactive and systematic about collecting data on health care practice. These mechanism should include:

  • Alternative dispute resolution processes to resolve scope of practice disputes between two or more professions;
  • Procedures for demonstration projects to be safely conducted and data collected on the effectiveness, quality of care, and costs associated with a profession expanding its existing scope of practice; and
  • Comprehensive legislative "sunrise" and "sunset" processes that ensure consumer protection while addressing the challenges of expanding existing professions' practice authority, and regulating currently unregulated healing disciplines.

 

CONTINUING COMPETENCE

Recommendation 10 States should require that their regulated health care practitioners demonstrate their competence in the knowledge, judgment, technical skills and interpersonal skills relevant to their jobs throughout their careers.