FL Board Meeting Notes 08-21-25

Hi everyone,

As per usual, here are the notes from the most recent board meeting that was held 08/21. Lots of different things here, so I will get to them all. As usual, no personal names or identifying information will be given for disciplinary proceedings. You are free to look up any of the publicly available information to review, however, through the board meetings page: https://floridasmentalhealthprofessions.gov/meeting.../ Just be sure to select “past events” since it is slightly different since the board website changed.

Rules Discussion

• Senate Bill 1808- there is now a requirement and timeframe in relation to returning overpayment of funds to patients who pay for services and are owed refunds. This was passed in the FL legislature; the board is adding in disciplinary guidelines for those who violate this statute. They are starting off actions at lower penalties for now. There is now a requirement to re-pay back an overpayment to a patient within 30 days of the overpayment being discovered.

• CSCS1299 Bill- there are some updates via this bill to the MOBILE application to apply for a license. It has been changed to review professional activity from 3 years to 2 years and does not automatically disqualify anyone with a history of the National Practitioner Database for ethical violations. Not much that affects us here, moreso people who apply here from out of state.

• Probable Cause Panel Rule updates: with 3 members part of the board now, 2 members allow for a Quorum, but statute says for the PCP panel the members who participate in the PCP are recused from actual formal disciplinary actions. Discussions around allowing the DOH to handle probable cause as part of a rule change were had, with the board deciding to move forward with language changes to allow for DOH to take over PCPs when board member numbers drop to 3 or below. Apparently many boards have struggled to function due to the Governor's office not appointing more board members. This will allow all board members to participate in informal and disciplinary hearings until they can get more board member nominated.

  
  

Disciplinary Proceedings

• A fair amount of dual relationships happening this board meeting- please be mindful that you cannot hire your patients to do anything in your practice. Do not otherwise associate with your patients intentfully outside of your clinical work together. This includes former patients.

• Similar to dual relationships with patients, this also applies to your coworkers and supervisees- Please be mindful of your personal relationships with your colleagues and supervisees.There’s some highly inappropriate dynamics noted in this meeting that compromise the integrity of the professional relationship.

• More out of state telehealth providers getting disciplined- I am glad to see this is becoming more common as registrations flood the state. Out of state registered providers must follow the same rules. As a reminder, if you move to this state with an out of state telehealth registration, you need to secure the full license for the state.

• This was mentioned in a previous meeting but it bears repeating: if you get your Medicaid number revoked for ANY reason you are auto-reported to the board. That is state law. If you need to terminate with Medicaid, do so through the proper channels before breaking a Medicaid rule and having your number revoked.

  
  

General Notes

• Prosecution teams are getting through cases faster- there is a dip in amount of cases open, which is nice to see.

• Be sure that you are getting some sort of confirmation, whether it be via email or some sort of interaction with board staff, when you are switching QS’ as a registered intern. More variances/waivers coming up where people did not get pre-approval from board staff in switching QS’ before starting (and trying to count) clinical hours.

• Board staff are beginning to issue notices of a QS being added to a registered interns profile to BOTH the registered intern and the QS. That is a nice change while we await the online portal changes where we can actually see who is assigned to whom.

• COUNSELING COMPACT UPDATE- Similar to the NBCC meeting (see my other post on the Counseling Compact for that update), FL Board staff is anticipating that the first round of states will begin onboarding with the Compact LATE SEPTEMBER/EARLY OCTOBER. Board staff has concerns about how some sensitive information will be shared with the Compact website, however, so they are deciding to hold back a bit and have FL join the second wave to see how other states handle the sensitive information security. They are thinking BEFORE END OF YEAR FL will be added in.

• Since the Counseling Compact will have an expedited full licensure option if approved through the website, the Licensure by Examination applications will be updated to reflect that option.

• For clarification from the July 1st change to the accreditation standards: the board WILL accept a CACREP accredited school counseling degree to apply for registered internship. They just want to make sure you have the appropriate credit hours and appropriate coursework.

• More discussion in public comment around whether SW/MHC/MFT can do psychological assessments and complete evaluations with appropriate training (think level C, things that were previously assumed to need a psychologist license). It is not something the board can answer through public comment and requires a declaratory statement petition. So for the moment no specific board answer on yes/no.

And that’s it! Any questions, feel free to post them here in the comments.