The California Veterinary Medical Board is in the process of adopting a new regulation to “establish minimum standards” for a managing licensee of a veterinary hospital premise. Currently the Board’s regulations require the managing veterinarian to be responsible for the premises complying with minimum standards of veterinary practice. They do not state what that is. But if the Board’s new regulation makes it through the adoption process, the managing licensee will have more clearly defined and additional obligations.
Proposed Board Regulation 2030.5 provides:
(a) A Licensee Manager is the California licensed veterinarian named as the Managing Licensee on a facility’s premise permit.
(b) The Licensee Manager is responsible for ensuring that the premise for which he/she is manager complies with specified requirements of the Veterinary Practice Act and is responsible for ensuring that the physical and operational components of a premise meet the minimum standards of practice as set forth in the Board’s regulations.
(c) The Licensee Manager is responsible for ensuring that no unlicensed activity is occurring within the premise or in any location where any function of veterinary medicine, veterinary surgery or veterinary dentistry is being conducted off the premises under the auspices of this premise license.
(d) The Licensee Manager shall maintain whatever physical presence is reasonable within the facility to ensure that the requirements in (a) – (c) are met.
(e) Each licensed veterinarian shall be responsible for their individual violations of the practice act or any regulation adopted thereunder.
And in case there is any doubt regarding the Board’s mission in adopting this new regulation, the regulation adoption process requires a licensing Board to state its “reasons” for the regulation, which the Board has articulated as follows:
The proposed regulation establishes the minimum standards for a California licensed veterinarian who is the managing licensee of a veterinary hospital premise. It establishes that the managing licensee is wholly responsible for insuring the minimum standards are followed regardless of the number of hospital premises managed by the managing licensee and it requires the manager to maintain whatever physical presence is necessary to ensure such requirements are met. (Emphasis added).
Many veterinary premises licensees will have to examine and change the way they run their hospitals and clinics. Are you ready to be “wholly responsible?”