Under the new law:
- Doctors who’ve had their medical licenses suspended or revoked in other states are now ineligible to practice in Texas.
- It’s now a Class A misdemeanor to lie on license applications.
- All physicians must now undergo criminal background checks and fingerprinting with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
- All physicians must undergo 24/7 monitoring with National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is a confidential database Congress established in 1986 containing doctor discipline and malpractice records from across the country.
The NPDB alerts state medical boards, like the Texas Medical Board (TMB), if a doctor is disciplined while practicing medicine in another state or is criminally convicted.
You can find such actions on the physician’s online profile on the TMB website.
New actions should be posted on the TMB website within 10 business days. It will take two years, however, to enroll all Texas doctors in the NPDB.
More on KXAN.
