Date: 10/31/1998

Author(s): Leonard Finocchio, Catherine Dower, Noelle Blick, Christine Gragnola, the Taskforce on Health Care Workforce Regulation

 

Health care workforce regulation plays a critical role in consumer protection. For most of this century, the state regulation of health care occupations and professions has established a minimum standard for safe practice and removed the egregiously incompetent. To become a more viable element of consumer protection in health care, professional regulation must evolve at the same rate as the economic, political, intellectual and technological environments in which its licensees work. This report outlines for regulators, legislators, policy makers and health care professionals, three priority areas that present the most challenges to, and promise for, improving professional regulation: health professions boards and governance structures, scopes of practice authority, and continuing competence.