Health care professionals who have one positive drug test will be immediately be pulled from practice (although not necessarily permanently) and information regarding their conditions will be made public for the first time.
This move marks a substantial shift in California's policy toward drug abuse, following an audit of a program for drug addicted doctors was conducted and discovered that the program poorly monitored patients and failed to terminate those who relapsed.
Until this implementation of universal policies by the California Consumer Affairs, each one of the 21 state licensing boards had the autonomy to create its own standards for the professionals it found to be abusing or addicted to drugs.
Amongst the new polices are:
(1) That health care professionals suspected of drug abuse must undergo a clinical evaluation at their own expense to determine if they are still fit to practice.
(2) During this process their licenses will be made "inactive," and they will be subject to random drug tests twice a week.
(3) A restriction that doctors cannot return to work until they have a month of clean tests.
(4) For the first time, the records of these doctors will be available to the public, so those doctors who have undergone treatment will be known to their current and potential patients.
The last qualification is the only one that should have given the Board of Consumer of Affairs and the Legislature pause, since the publication of these records are likely to destroy or substantially hurt their careers.
Therefore, health care professionals will be extremely unlikely to voluntarily submit themselves into a program, knowing that doing so will lead to the information about their addiction being made completely public.
Such publication could deter other health care professionals from reporting on their coworkers as well, knowing that doing so could mean the death of the other' professional's career at the sacrifice of receiving rehabilitation treatment.
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