one day, while i was taking my lunch break, i got into an internet and looked up my license from the state website and to my relief found nothing. for some reason i looked up my nurse supervisor's name and she had lots of disciplines. it took her 7 years to reinstate her license. what does being reinstating her license mean? can she still practice nursing without being reinstated?
i look up my license once in a while because i know anybody can complain to the bon about my nursing practice and i also know my employer can complain and my license can be investigated.
so, do you check your license for any disciplines or complains?
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
Basically, I think that because it is public knowledge, we have to know that people may look up our information for many unscrupulous reasons. If a professional is considered guilty of certain charges, their situation can leave them feeling naked because it is exposed to the world. We know that getting in-most schools speak about this and create an assignment for us to review the Office of Professional Discipline, BON, or whatever it is called in their area, so, it is expected (even if not appreciated). The nosy classmates demonstrated this to me after graduation. In fact, I was quite angry and felt a bit violated, because when I passed my boards, I wanted to keep it quiet for the rest of the week before I made my announcement. But, my college professor (who is also affiliated with my hospital) called a few of my former classmates and told them that I passed, and I felt that I had no choice but to make the announcement. Oh, well, it is what it is...we are public property regarding our licensure status.
My stance on this is that it can be done discretely and not discussed with collagues. I don't waste a great deal of time trying to look up my co-workers or friends, but the times that I had, it was usually because someone was bragging they were a nurse and found out they were not. That was just a silent laugh for me-a private joke.
State laws require one to have an active license in order to practice one's profession be it cosmetology, funeral director, law, nursing or medicine.
Up to employer to verify active licenese prior to employment and yearly thereafter
Medicare requires that healthcare practitioners have active unrestricted lincense in order to provide services BEFORE first encounter along with sanction check. Since I manage Home Helath agency's Central Intake department with 10,000 PA/NJ/DE doctors in my database, this is a yearly fun task to perform. So I check this website several times a week.
For my nursing staff, created a spreedsheet with direct license lookup linked to state website so easy to perform. Have had a few that needed a reminder to renew last week prior expiration.
Disciplinary actions will not appear on the website until gone through the full regulatory review and outcome determined, then will be posted online. Tazzi is correct that is one completes monitoring/diverson program successfully, won't have recond of complaint.
Medicare requires that healthcare practitioners have active unrestricted lincense in order to provide services BEFORE first encounter along with sanction check. Since I manage Home Helath agency's Central Intake department with 10,000 PA/NJ/DE doctors in my database, this is a yearly fun task to perform. So I check this website several times a week.
Karen, I read this part several times and I still don't get it.......I guess I'm more tired than I thought........
Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.
What it means is hospitals, skilled nursing homes, Rehab facilities and home health care agencies are required by Medicare to verify active unrestrictive license of all physicians that do business with them AND that dootor must be Medicare participating in order to bill for services provided by facility BEFORE patient is treated by facility (part of Medicare Conditions of Participation).
Hospitals have seperate physician credentialing staff to handle this stuff; homecare agencies do not...we're so large it's become a year round chore to keep up with physician volume. Having to tell a hospital referral source unable to accept thier patient for homecare cause their doctor does not participate in Medicare has lead to some interesting conversations.
Oh, I see........the way I read it I thought you meant nurses had to have unrestricted licenses before service was provided, and I couldn't understand why Medicare would be interested in the status of a nurse's license.
Actually, Medicare (CMS) cares about everyone's licenses, nurses, PTs, docs, RTs, anyone who's supposed to be licensed. I worked for several years as a state and CMS hospital surveyor, and part of the routine survey process was checking to see that the hospital consistently/routinely verifies that all the licensed personnel have valid, active licenses, prior to employment and periodically/routinely after that.
Why wouldn't CMS be interested in nurses' licenses?
pagandeva2000, LPN
7,984 Posts
Basically, I think that because it is public knowledge, we have to know that people may look up our information for many unscrupulous reasons. If a professional is considered guilty of certain charges, their situation can leave them feeling naked because it is exposed to the world. We know that getting in-most schools speak about this and create an assignment for us to review the Office of Professional Discipline, BON, or whatever it is called in their area, so, it is expected (even if not appreciated). The nosy classmates demonstrated this to me after graduation. In fact, I was quite angry and felt a bit violated, because when I passed my boards, I wanted to keep it quiet for the rest of the week before I made my announcement. But, my college professor (who is also affiliated with my hospital) called a few of my former classmates and told them that I passed, and I felt that I had no choice but to make the announcement. Oh, well, it is what it is...we are public property regarding our licensure status.
My stance on this is that it can be done discretely and not discussed with collagues. I don't waste a great deal of time trying to look up my co-workers or friends, but the times that I had, it was usually because someone was bragging they were a nurse and found out they were not. That was just a silent laugh for me-a private joke.