If you’re a licensed health care professional in Florida, you’ve probably heard of the Professional’s Resource Network. And if you’re like most professionals, you probably don’t know anything else about them.
As such, you could be forgiven for assuming, as so many do, that the Professional Resource Network is, as its name suggests, a resource for professionals. You might imagine that the organization exists to help you navigate difficult situations. In fact, if you know that PRN is a therapist led organization, you might even assume they are subject to ordinary therapist-patient confidentiality, and that you can safely confide in them in order to help them direct you to the resources you need, whether you seek treatment, counseling, or merely guidance through the turbulent and often confusing landscape of state health care regulation and compliance.
You would be wrong. Dangerously wrong, and at your peril. Intentionally or not, the name of PRN misleads countless health care professionals into making damaging admissions to a rightly and notoriously feared law enforcement organization. But who can blame them? Just look at PRN’s website. It’s almost as inviting as this one, (and we really are on your side). The Stepford wives banner may be a bit much, but the message is clear: “trust us, we’re here for you”. Everything about PRN’s public-facing image reinforces the mistaken assumptions you may already have regarding their role and relationship to you. But admissions you make to PRN are NOT meaningfully confidential. They CAN and WILL be used against you. And while nobody at PRN will tell you so, you do have the right to an attorney, and the second best time to call one is now.
If you’re reading this because you’re already in contact with PRN, keep two very important things in mind.
PRN is an arm of the Department of Health, the regulatory agency governing your right to work. It collects information for the Department, which can and does issue licensure revocations on the basis of such. Being a resource for the Department’s Prosecutors, an adverse party, PRN is best seen to legally operate at arm’s length from practitioners.
PRN is the statutorily authorized consultant which advises the Department of Health, monitoring impaired, potentially impaired, or “at risk” practitioners, and reporting their findings and recommendations to the Department. From there, the Department determines (generally deferring to the informed assessments of PRN) whether such practitioners can work and whether they should be disciplined for (as applicable) alleged failure to follow the orders of PRN.
The decision making of PRN evaluators has been much criticized for being revenue-driven, heavy-handed, and displaying a tendency towards treating almost everyone as an addict. A typical evaluation will result in a demand that the subject sign a five-year monitoring contract, (with monitoring to be paid for by the subject out of pocket). The conditions are often inflexible and not subject to negotiation, as they are backed by the threat of referral to DOH for discipline. And because of PRN’s role as legislatively authorized expert consultants, DOH listens.
The task of PRN is to protect the general public from the danger presented by impaired practitioners. This is, to be sure, a commendable initiative. And while this article is to some extent critical of PRN’s “good cop” like branding, and while we do seek to provide licensees a fair warning which must necessarily include a candid report of the risks of interacting with this organization; nothing herein is intended to dispute the importance of the organization’s primary objective and the indispensable work that they do.
However, PRN’s mission comes at a steep cost, and licensees must understand PRN’s priorities and relationship to other parties in order to know what to expect from them. To practitioners who believe PRN exists to support them, reality often hits like a train. For one thing, because their superseding priority is to protect the public, then protecting, or even dealing fairly with you, is treated, at best, as an impractical and expendable luxury. For another thing, because their role is to protect the public from impaired practitioners (who are, it must be admitted, sometimes very dangerous people), PRN has an extremely strong tendency to treat almost everyone they evaluate as, in fact, an impaired practitioner, even if that licensee justifiably believes he’s only being evaluated or monitored as a precaution. Their day-to-day business of keeping addicts in line, lamentably has been observed to prejudice their outlook on every licensee who draws their suspicion. PRN evaluation straddles an uncomfortable line between therapy and custodial interrogation; encouraging the kind of trust people place in their therapists, and then utilizing it to elicit information which will be used to build a disciplinary case against the licensee or to justify often harsh, protracted, or expensive monitoring conditions.
As such, it’s more accurate to understand PRN agents of law enforcement than as treatment providers. However, this is a simplification, and you should not assume everything you know about law enforcement agencies applies here. In fact, while it evaluates disciplinary infractions instead of crimes, PRN follows different rules than criminal investigations, and can actually be far more dangerous in several key respects. For instance:
If you take one thing from this article, make it this #DAB400en rule: if you’ve been contacted by, threatened by, referred to, or reached out to by PRN, you should assume you are a suspect. As a suspect, you should speak to PRN the same way you would speak to police. That is: DON’T. Call your lawyer first. At the very least, you must be able to make an informed decision about whether, and how, if at all, to engage with PRN, or whether to instead defend your innocence against an impending investigation by the Department of Health. Either way, the sooner you know what you’re doing, and how best to do it, the better your position can be preserved and defended. Bad things come to those who wait. Call now to schedule your no-obligation consultation with one of our experienced health care regulatory attorneys.
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Phone: (941) 893-3449
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