The Dental Quality Assurance Commission (DQAC) has been engaged in rulemaking to make technical rule amendments in alignment with legislation passed in 2022, Substitute Senate Bill 5496 (SSB 5496). SSB 5496 made clarifying changes to impaired practitioner programs and under this bill, the “Impaired Physician Program” is now referred to as the “Physician Health Program” (PHP). To be more inclusive, SSB 5496 also broadened the purpose of the program itself to include other impairing or potentially impairing health conditions, instead of only substance abuse. Further, the bill clarified that potentially impaired as well as impaired physicians are eligible for the PHP, and references to “substance abuse” and “addiction” were changed to “substance use disorders.”

DQAC has now filed a CR-103 finalizing these technical changes, and modifications, include changing terminology from “substance abuse monitoring program” to “physician health program or substance use disorder monitoring program” in order to remove stigma. The modifications also clarify confidentiality protections in RCW 18.131.070 for health professional monitoring programs. For those interested in reviewing specifics, the tracked changes to the rules can be found here.

Review the Rulemaking Order