A criminal conviction with a substantial relationship to your profession or an investigation by the California Physical Therapy Board (CPTB) can threaten your license. If you are in this situation, you should contact an experienced license defense attorney immediately for a fair outcome. At the Kern County License Attorney, we understand that CPTB is strict in enforcing disciplinary measures, which is why we will work hard to defeat or reduce the effects of the disciplinary inquiry on your career and livelihood.
The Crucial Roles of Physical Therapists (PTs)
Many Californians who sustain injuries from accidents experience physical impediments or disabilities that make their lives feel hopeless. Chronic conditions that limit one’s mobility, trigger pain, and make it challenging to maintain good health and fitness can also make one feel helpless. Fortunately, this is where you come in as a PT to restore physical function. Some of your responsibilities as a PT include:
Diagnosing Physical Impairments
Your work is to examine patients with various physical impairments and identify the body structures affected by the impairments. Once you understand the source of impairment, you administer rehabilitative therapy to help the patient regain normal physical function. You work with all categories of people, including the senior citizens recovering from stroke and other individuals with physical disabilities.
Designing Treatment Plans
You do not use a general protocol for all your patients. Each patient has unique needs that require specialized care. Your responsibility is to understand the patient’s health condition, injuries, and other orthopedic structural features to develop a bespoke treatment plan.
Doctors and physicians encourage patients to complement medications for these conditions with physical therapy or exercises for better results. So, you must work with each patient to develop a plan that alleviates pain and restores function.
Implementing Treatment Plans
Once you have crafted a bespoke treatment plan, the next step is to implement the plan and make necessary modifications based on the evolving patient needs. You schedule regular treatment sessions depending on the severity of the injury or illness until you achieve the desired outcome.
During treatment, you help the patient perform several mobility exercises, such as raising limbs, and perform manual therapy when necessary to facilitate movement. Not all patients are in the same physical shape. Therefore, your physical exercises must be guided by the patient’s fitness to avoid causing further injury.
Educating Patients About Self-care
As the patient recovers from the injuries and regains some function, you should train them to perform some PT exercises at home without professional help. If they learn to perform some of these exercises at home without supervision, you will achieve progress in the few sessions you schedule, resulting in faster recovery.
Additionally, you must educate your patients on self-care to enable them to live a healthy lifestyle and avoid similar injuries or illnesses in the future. Physical impairments stemming from chronic conditions, such as strokes, are preventable with lifestyle changes.
Despite the efforts you put into helping your patients and transforming their lives, a patient or caregiver with unrealistic expectations can raise a complaint regarding your competency or professionalism, threatening the license you earned through more than five years of training and a master’s degree. Even when you do everything right, some physical impairments might not improve, leaving clients unsatisfied. Other times, despite your training, education, and experience, you might make a mistake that attracts a complaint.
Unfortunately, these complaints, even though some are minor, are exaggerated or false, and can threaten your license, which is why you should take them seriously by partnering with a competent attorney who appreciates your crucial role in society and the dedication it takes to obtain a license. Such an attorney will defend you at every step of the disciplinary process to ensure a fair outcome.
California Physical Therapy Board (CPTB) Mission
The mission of CPTB is to protect and promote the interests of Californians by ensuring high-standard physical therapy. The regulatory agency achieves this mission through consistent governance and enforcing various regulations and codes of conduct, including:
- The Physical Therapy Practice Act
- Business and Professions Code
- Other regulations that promote a safe and competent PT practice
Additionally, it issues licenses to qualified PTs, with at least 20,000 PTs licensed to operate in California. To ensure its licensees maintain the industry’s high standards, the board is tasked with investigating complaints against PTs and imposing disciplinary actions, including license suspension, revocation, citations, or fines on those found guilty of violations.
The CPTB offers various consumer services, including:
- Verifying the background information and education of license applicants before issuing licenses.
- Providing information about PTS and PT assistants
Even though the board can provide consumers with this information, it cannot refer a patient to a certain PT.
CPTB’s Disciplinary Guidelines
The board has a disciplinary guideline detailing the process a complaint should follow once it is reported. The complaint against you could originate from a coworker, a patient, or a patient’s caregiver. Also, a complaint could stem from a criminal conviction for a crime substantially related to your profession. The common grounds for an investigation against a PT include the following:
- Substance or alcohol abuse that happens when you are on the job
- Professional misconduct
- Sexual misconduct with a patient, client, or customer
- Gross negligence or extreme deviation from the set industry standards
- Participating in dishonest behavior, such as insurance fraud
- Giving faulty or misleading nutritional advice
- Disregarding infection control regulations
- Paying or receiving kickbacks for referrals
- Fraudulently obtaining your PT license
- Breach of license probationary terms
- Excessive prescription or treatment
- Misleading advertisement
- Poorly maintaining, modifying, or falsifying patient records
- Declining to provide patient records upon request
- Failing to maintain patient confidentiality
- Incompetent practice
- Practicing out of the scope of your license
- Hiring unlicensed PT assistants
- Having a conviction with a substantial relationship to your profession
Not all violations are worth investigating. Typically, when the board receives a grievance, it assigns it to the Division of Consumer Services Protection. The division has analysts who evaluate various grievances to determine if the CPTB has authority over the matter. If it has authority, the analyst gathers more details on the matter and consults a PT expert regarding the accusations to determine whether a complaint warrants an investigation. Based on these consultations, an analyst can dismiss a complaint if it cannot be substantiated and refer those that can be substantiated to the regulatory agency for investigations.
Possible Outcomes of an Investigation
If the board decides to open an investigation into the accusation, they will send you, the PT, and the complainant an investigation notice. An investigation will review the patient records, medical bills, and other relevant documents that contain information regarding the accusations. After the inquiry, the regulatory agency can take several actions, including:
- Closing the complaint but preserving the file for at least sixty months if the accusation cannot be validated.
- Close the case and retain the records indefinitely if the evidence obtained from the investigation is insufficient to trigger disciplinary action.
- Issuance of a citation or fine of no more than $5,000 for a minor violation
- Filing a formal accusation and referring the case to the Attorney General’s office for an administrative hearing. The board files formal accusations of serious violations and often imposes severe disciplinary measures, such as license suspension or revocation, if your allegations are confirmed.
Your license defense attorney should gather exculpatory evidence before and during the administrative proceeding to convince the ALJ to drop the formal accusation. In other instances, your attorney will negotiate with the board and present mitigating factors for a lenient disciplinary measure that does not result in loss of your license and ability to practice. This arrangement may include a 30-day suspension of your license and 36 months of probation. While on probation, you will be allowed to practice, but under strict conditions.
If you file a defense notice within 15 days of receiving the statement of issues, you will have a hearing before an ALJ. In the proceeding, the opposing sides will present their evidence and arguments. The ALJ will then evaluate the evidence and propose the necessary disciplinary action or charge dismissal, contingent on the board’s disciplinary guidelines. The proposition or recommendation by the ALJ is not binding. Your regulatory agency can modify or adopt the recommendations.
You can appeal the board’s verdict if you are not satisfied. However, the judge will only evaluate the evidence submitted during the administrative hearing. You cannot introduce new evidence because the purpose of the appeal is to show a mistake was made during the proceeding, leading to an unfavorable verdict.
Other Possible Board Actions
Apart from license suspension or revocation, other penalties you can face for a violation include:
- Citation and Fines
CPTB does not deem a citation and fine a disciplinary measure, but you, the licensee, might feel differently. Under Business and Professions Code 125.9, CPTB can issue citations and fines for minor violations. The monetary fines can range from $100 to $5,000. A citation becomes public and can damage your reputation, so you should consider obtaining legal representation even in a minor accusation to avoid punishment.
A fine payment does not amount to an admission of the violation. However, to the public, it appears that you admitted guilt. The citation and fine are accompanied by an abatement order, requiring you to avoid a similar violation detailed in the citation.
If the board has imposed a citation, your attorney can request an informal conference or an administrative inquiry to appeal the decision. In the hearing, your attorney will present evidence to convince the ALJ to remove the citation from your record or lower the fine imposed to make it affordable. It is better to unsuccessfully appeal a citation than to ignore it and not pay the fines, as this could trigger a license revocation.
- Public Reprimand
Pursuant to BPC 495, CPTB has the mandate to publicly reprimand a PT or their assistant instead of withdrawing their ability to practice. For the board to impose a letter of reprimand in place of other disciplinary measures, the following must be true:
- Your violation must have been an isolated incident that occurred long ago
- The offense is unlikely to recur
- You admitted to the violation
- You have shown remorse for the violation
- If the violation involves substance abuse or addiction, you have taken measures to rehabilitate by enrolling in a program that lasts at least twelve months.
A public reprimand letter is issued only for minor violations in which patients did not sustain injuries.
PT License Application Denial
BPC 2660.5 gives the CPTB the mandate to deny licensure to applicants who have been convicted of sex crimes and have an obligation to register as sex offenders, unless the conviction is for indecent exposure under PEN 314.
Similarly, the regulatory authority can deny your application if you have a criminal record or misconduct with a substantial relationship to your profession, responsibilities, and qualifications. BPC 480 outlines the following as denial reasons:
- Having a prior serious felony guilty verdict
- Having a conviction within seven years of the application date for a crime with a substantial relationship to your profession.
- You intentionally made a false representation that was revealed during the application
A conviction for sexual or professional misconduct is sufficient to trigger an application rejection.
A license application is an existing phase of your journey to become a PT. Unfortunately, many applicants assume it is simple, when in fact there are circumstances that can delay the process or result in application rejection. The best approach for the last step in your PT journey is to hire an experienced attorney to help you with the license application and streamline the process.
Instead of a simple license denial, an attorney will negotiate for an initial probationary permit with favorable probation terms, which allows you to practice but under certain conditions. At the end of the probationary term, you regain the right to practice without restrictions.
Find a Skilled Physical Therapist License Defense Attorney Near Me
You become a physical therapist by completing at least 5 years of education and training to attain the highest level of expertise. After that, you must take a licensure exam and participate in continuing education and other training programs. Unfortunately, even after all the perseverance and hard work, your hard-earned license could be threatened by a minor, false, or exaggerated complaint.
If your license is at risk, the Kern County License Attorney can help. We understand your role and the need to retain your license, which is why we will help you navigate the CPTB process for a fair verdict. Call us at 888-888-8888 to arrange a free consultation.
