Professional Licensing Defense
Our Proven Record
Peters, Rubin, Sheffield & Hodges has extensive experience representing professionals before the state licensing boards. We see each practitioner’s appearance before the board as an opportunity to confirm the practitioner’s best practices or mitigate innocent mistakes. For the past 20 years, Peters, Rubin & Sheffield has both prosecuted cases as a Special Assistant Attorney General and defended cases before the Boards. This experience gives us intimate knowledge of the personalities and processes involved in licensing hearings and is critical to our successful representation of licensed professionals. Further, as each case before the Boards is “quasi-criminal” in nature, our experience in trying complex criminal cases enables us to aggressively handle similar issues that arise in cases before the Boards and preserve our client’s constitutional rights should a criminal prosecution be initiated.
Peters, Rubin, Sheffield & Hodges has represented professionals in a variety of licensing board cases. Those cases include allegations of:
- Impairment
- Standard of Care Violations
- Inappropriate Sexual Conduct
- Boundary Violations
- Underlying Criminal Convictions or Allegations
- Medicaid and Medicare Fraud
- Private Insurance Fraud
- Unprofessional Conduct
The licensing board is not always the first to be notified of an alleged infraction. Many cases start out as criminal allegations and quickly become parallel investigations involving State or Federal criminal courts and the Boards. Peters, Rubin, Sheffield & Hodges handles both types of investigations and uses the most-qualified experts to review patient records, billing information, and impairment issues. We know how important it is to resolve all of the allegations pending before each investigative body in order to get a just resolution for the licensee.
Our Understanding of False Charges
Every person has a constitutional right to practice their profession. We know how devastating it is to a client to lose that right or have it hindered in any way. The Georgia Supreme Court has held: “Next to the loss of freedom comes the loss of one’s means of a livelihood.” The right to practice one’s livelihood is a property right that the State cannot take away without providing due process of law. The lawyers at Peters, Rubin, Sheffield & Hodges investigate, research, and litigate every issue involved to give our clients the best chance to continue in their practice and to ensure that due process is provided.
Physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, dentists, psychologists, chiropractors, pharmacists and other licensed professionals face many challenges not only in maintaining their credentials but also in dealing with the growing litigiousness of patients, other practitioners, and third parties. Complaints against a practitioner are paralyzing, especially when forced to appear before the various Boards to defend against alleged infractions. The Boards act as both prosecutor and jury – conducting investigations like a prosecutor, but also reviewing evidence and deciding guilt or innocence like a jury. Most lawyers are unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of each Board, the inner workings of the Attorney General’s Office, and the oddities of the Administrative Procedure Act.
