Being a licensed healthcare professional in Michigan means abiding by the public health code in everything you do on the job. When you receive an Administrative Complaint in the mail, that means your respective board — Board of Medicine, Board of Nursing, Board of Pharmacy, or other — has reason to believe you’ve violated that code.
In other words, something you may have done wrong on the job got someone’s attention, and the board thinks it’s serious enough to investigate. Now your professional reputation is at risk of permanent damage. Your hospital privileges could be revoked. Your healthcare practice may be excluded from Medicare. You may face suspension, even revocation of your license.
If this is happening to you right now, every day you let slip by without taking action is all but guaranteeing a bad outcome with the board. You’re throwing the fate of your career into someone else’s hands. Here’s what you need to do instead.
This is absolutely critical. If you fail to respond to an Administrative Complaint within 30 days of receipt, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) will default you and treat your failure to respond as an admission of all of the allegations in the Administrative Complaint pursuant to MCL 333.16231(9). The Disciplinary Subcommittee of your licensing board will then determine a sanction without taking anything into consideration but the allegations in the Administrative Complaint.
Is that all that you would want the Disciplinary Subcommittee to know about you in determining the fate of your license?
Of course not. You want your side to be heard. That’s why you’ll need an experienced Michigan healthcare licensing attorney who routinely prepares Answers to Administrative Complaints on behalf of healthcare providers like you, in response to the allegations of fact and law that are made in Administrative Complaints.
When responding to the Administrative Complaint, you may choose to: 1) request a settlement; 2) request a compliance conference; or 3) request a formal administrative hearing. Depending on your circumstances, there may be very good reasons for choosing one option over the others.
Be aware, while it is possible to proceed to a formal administrative hearing after you have participated in a compliance conference, participation in a compliance conference will no longer be an option for you once you have had a formal administrative hearing.
Each of those three options serves a different purpose based on the concerns that are most important to you and the facts and evidence in your case. Again, you need a lawyer specializing in health care licensing in Michigan, who will determine the best route you should take.
An Administrative Complaint is the product of a lengthy professional licensing investigation process. At the conclusion of a professional licensing investigation, an Investigation Report, along with any number of attachments (together, the “Investigative File”), is submitted to the board for its consideration.
Obtaining and reviewing a copy of the Investigative File that gave rise to the Administrative Complaint is a very important part of your defense. Unfortunately, many health care licensees have no idea how to obtain a copy of the Investigative File — or that it even exists.
As part of our what we do as Michigan health care licensing attorneys, we routinely obtain the Investigative Files in Administrative Complaint matters. This allows us to review them and share them with our clients in preparing to defend their case.
If you have received an Order of Summary Suspension along with an Administrative Complaint, that order immediately takes away your ability to practice without first providing you an opportunity for a hearing. Fortunately, a Petition for Dissolution of Summary Suspension can be filed right away so that an expedited hearing can be held to dissolve the summary suspension.
We at Chapman Law Group have won many of these hearings on behalf of our clients, so that their licenses have been restored and they can return to work. Meanwhile, we use our know-how to defend against the underlying allegations.
After receiving an Administrative Complaint, you may feel completely alone, scared for what could happen to your license and your career. However, you do not have to — and should not — fight to protect your license all by yourself. In the hands of someone who has never before been served with an Administrative Complaint, it is a matter rife with mistakes waiting to happen.
Instead, you should retain experienced legal counsel specializing in professional licensing proceedings.
And that’s where we at Chapman Law Group come in. We will file a written response to the Administrative Complaint (“Answer to Administrative Complaint”), and we will represent you in settlement negotiations, at compliance conference, and/or at a hearing on the merits of the Administrative Complaint.
Further, when you reach out to us as early as possible — preferably the moment you receive an Administrative Complaint — we can be even more helpful, as we can take steps right away to improve your outcome.
The Michigan healthcare license attorneys of Chapman Law Group are well-versed in the importance and intricacies of medical licensure. Our professional licensing defense practice group works to keep the licenses for Michigan healthcare professionals — physicians, chiropractors, pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners, mental health professionals and pain management specialists — from suspension and revocation.
We serve clients throughout every corner of the state of Michigan — in metropolitan areas such as Detroit, Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Grand Rapids, Troy, Lansing, Flint, Saginaw, Midland, Muskegon, Bay City, and Kalamazoo; and everywhere else including the Upper Peninsula, the Thumb Area, Northern Michigan, and the Great Lakes coastlines.
Our licensing lawyers represent health professionals before medical boards including
Don’t wait if you receive an Administrative Complaint. Contact our Michigan health care licensing attorneys today.
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Michigan Office
1441 W. Long Lake Road, Suite 310
Troy, MI 48098
Phone: (248) 644-6326
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