A Petition for Appropriate Relief (“PAR”) is a licensing board prosecution motion, presented to a licensing board committee, alleging an emergent need to suspend a licensee’s license. PARs target licensees currently on PHMP disciplinary probation, whether a voluntary agreements and involuntary, licensing board order. This is the TRAP I reference throughout my website, blogs, and PNAP Trap articles.
Licensees placed in the disciplinary monitoring unit (“DMU”) or the Voluntary Recovery Program (“VRP”) administered by the Professional Health Monitoring Program (“PHMP”) are subject to extensive board orders imposing mandatory drug or alcohol abstinence. The bait and switch of provision in every PHMP agreement is that for a licensee to maintain or be re-licensed they agree to automatic license suspension if they violate the terms and conditions of PHMP probation.
The Petition for Appropriate Relief or PAR is the prosecutor’s mechanism advising the board of licensees’ probationary order violations. Immediate license suspension is the initial board remedy. Thereafter, in order to secure licensure reinstatement, a licensee must file an answer to the PAR within 20 days. If the licensee does not seek a hearing or continue to honor the terms and conditions of the probation, their license will be indefinitely suspension.
It is through the PAR that board prosecutors apply a heavy-handed approach to compelling compliance with PHMP’s drug abstinence programs. In agreeing to the DMU, VRP agreement administered through the PHMP agreement, the licensee consents to this automatic suspension process. Each licensee waves a pre-suspension due process hearing.
PHMP, PNAP, and PHP caseworkers can raise any number of issues in a PAR. I have extensively written about the overbearing trap into which these programs invite licensees. PHMP uses the carrot and stick approach to licensees who seek reinstatement of or continuance of licensure. Missed or failed drug test is the number 1 basis for a PAR filing. PHMP case worker allegations of positive drug tests are routinely wrong, false, mixed up.
Unfortunately, PHMP cases workers claim improper violations two years after licensee’s participation in the programs. Prosecutors, tasked with keeping their jobs and honoring their clients’ (PHMP – through their respective Board) demands, follow instruction and file PARs for any number of suspicious reasons.
Unfortunately, the challenges to address a PAR while a license is suspended are very limited. Typically, extensions agreements or time periods within the programs is the only result that is accepted in order to secure license reinstatement. Call me to discuss your case.