Licensure

As the saying goes, everything is bigger and better in Texas. And that holds true for the Texas Medical Association. More than 55,000 physicians and medical students have chosen to be members of TMA. If you're new to Texas, use TMA's one-stop location for information on the licensure process, physician demographics, credentialing application, establishing your practice, state and federal agencies, resources for your practice and much more.

The Texas Medical Board (TMB) and Texas Medical Association remind physicians to continue to use strong medical judgment when considering drugs and therapies to treat COVID-19 and to take all appropriate steps when making any treatment decision.

Texas physicians must follow required minimum safe-practice standards related to COVID-19 – and post a notice describing those minimum standards – under an emergency rule the TMB adopted late yesterday. The rule went into effect at midnight May 1.

To raise awareness of and help curb human trafficking in Texas, state legislators passed a law last year requiring direct patient care physicians who renew their medical license after Sept. 1, 2020, to take one hour of CME that addresses human trafficking.

The Texas Medical Board has withdrawn its proposed rules to implement pieces of the state’s new law introducing baseball-style arbitration on many out-of-network medical bills. At its meeting Friday, the board pulled down its rule proposal, saying in a statement that it “would not cover all providers under the statute.”

The Texas Medical Board is trying to head off confusion about the state’s new 10-day opioid prescribing limit for acute pain, which takes effect on Sunday. TMB’s statement, released Friday, appears to address concerns that the new law means acute pain patients must be completely cut off from opioids beyond the 10-day mark. That’s not the case, according to the statement.

Beginning Sept. 1, the Texas Medical Board (TMB) will no longer issue paper licenses for physicians or physician assistants. Instead, new and renewed licenses will be available via the My TMB online portal. 

Eight years ago, when he experienced a rare patient death, McAllen family physician Ruben Aleman, MD, signed the death certificate the way Texas physicians had been doing it for years, and the only way he knew how: using pen and paper.

Two years ago during the 2017 regular session, the Texas Legislature put the practice of medicine in the state in serious danger, failing to renew the Texas Medical Board (TMB) and the state’s Medical Practice Act. Among other potentially catastrophic side effects, having no medical board and no medical practice act would have meant anyone in Texas could call themselves a physician and practice medicine.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the MOC bill into law. Find out why it’s an expensive, time-consuming process that many physicians believe offers no value to them or their patients.

It was supposed to be a benign medical board order caused by some minor missteps. Instead, without warning or a chance to argue his case, a Texas subspecialist in an underserved area lost his board certification. Sound like an anomalous nightmare? It might be — but it also could be that your certifying board has more discretion than you realize to review or even revoke your certification based on the slightest disciplinary action. 

“Is government giving us our money’s worth?” The Legislature relies on the Sunset process to regularly shine a light on state agencies and programs to see if they are still relevant in a changing world, and if so, how they can do their jobs better.

Most physicians strive to maintain the highest of standards by practicing good medicine and behaving professionally. But if you find yourself the subject of a TMB investigation, you need to understand how your responses and actions throughout the process will affect you now and in the future.