Texas Medical Board
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Media contact: Patrick Shaughnessy at (512) 305-7173 or patrick.shaughnessy@tmb.state.tx.us
Non-media contact: (512) 305-7030 or (800) 248-4062
TMB TO HOST TOWN HALL MEETINGS
Board also will Offer Licensing Seminars to Assist Applicants
The Texas Medical Board (TMB) will take to the road this summer to host a series of Town Hall meetings in communities across the state to meet with medical professionals and the public to gather input and feedback about regulation of the medical profession.
In conjunction with the Town Hall meetings, TMB also will offer in-depth seminars for entities that recruit or credential physicians to assist those entities in streamlining the application process for their applicants and to minimize application errors.
“Our purpose for these meetings is twofold,” said Dr. Roberta Kalafut, TMB’s board president. “First, we want to encourage a more active dialogue with doctors and with the public. The impressions we have as regulators may not mirror the impressions of the licensees. We want to know if there are instances in which our regulations can be modified to make compliance easier for the regulated community.
“And as we work to improve our licensing processes, we want those people who work with applicants everyday to have a more thorough understanding of what we need to see on those applications and what the most common errors are,” Kalafut continued. “We want to make licensing of physicians as seamless as possible.”
Each meeting will consist of two parts over two days. The Town Hall meeting will be conducted first, at 7 p.m. on the evening of the first day and the three-hour licensing seminar will be offered on the morning of the second day. All interested parties are invited to participate in either or both sessions.
TMB already has instituted two changes this spring that benefit licensees. The first, a “fast-track” enforcement system that allows physicians who face relatively minor administrative violations to dispose of those charges without needing to attend a hearing. The second, the License Inquiry System of Texas (LIST), is an online communication system that allows applicants to check the status of their applications 24 hours a day and also provides detailed explanations of any items required to process an individual’s physician licensure application. LIST also provides a message center where applicants and TMB staff can exchange messages.
The schedule for the Town Hall meetings is:
June 9 and 10 – Brownsville – Both sessions will be conducted at the Brownsville Event Center, 1 Event Center Boulevard. The Town Hall meeting will be at 7 p.m. on June 9 and the licensing seminar will begin at 8:30 a.m. on June 10.
June 17 and 18 – Midland – Both sessions will be conducted at the Center for Energy and Economic Diversification, 1400 N. FM 1788. The Town Hall meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on June 17 and the licensing seminar will begin at 8:30 a.m. on June 18.
June 23 and 24 – Austin – The Town Hall meeting will be at 7 p.m. on June 23rd in the Thompson Auditorium at the Texas Medical Association offices, 401 W. 15th St. The licensing seminar will begin at 11 a.m. on June 24 in Room 100 in the lobby area of the William P. Hobby Jr. State Office Building, 333 Guadalupe Street.
July 1 and 2 – Fort Worth, Both sessions will be conducted at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Boulevard. The sessions will be conducted in Luibel Hall on the second floor of the EAD building, which is at the corner of Montgomery and Camp Bowie. The Town Hall meeting will begin at 7 p.m. July 1. The licensing seminar will begin at 8:30 a.m. on July 2.
July 8 and 9 – Bryan/College Station – Both sessions will be conducted in Lecture Hall 1 on the first floor of the Joe Reynolds Medical Building at Texas A&M University, at the southwest corner of University Drive and Olsen Boulevard. The Town Hall meeting will be at 7 p.m. on July 8 and the licensing seminar will begin at 8:30 a.m. on July 9.
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