Texas Medical Board - June 2007

The Texas Medical Board recently updated their licensure requirements for Physicians. Instead of the 10 year employment verification requirement, physicians now only have to verify 5 years. State License Verifications are now a thing of the past. Evidently the Texas Medical Board is just pulling the disciplinary report from the FSMB to satisfy this requirement. Unfortunately the SPEX Examination is still a barrier which continues to exist for more experienced Physicians. The SPEX is an object lesson in lunacy. We had two physicians apply to Texas. One was the Program Director of a Residency Program in New York. The other was a Resident of the Program Director's Residency Program. Texas licensed the Resident in 4 months. The Program Director who taught the Resident took 10 months. He was forced to take the SPEX examination by the Texas Medical Board. He was board certified in Radiology. The American Board of Radiology does not re-certify its' members. They are grandfathered in. As such Texas wanted to make sure that he was "competent". They accepted the Student but doubted the Student's Teacher. I cannot see the reasoning in that but since when has common sense applied to the Texas Medical Board?