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VETERINARIANS
Who We Can Help: Veterinarians
Becoming a veterinarian was costly and required years of education and training to get your Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree (DVM), including clinical rotations, passing the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination, meeting Virginia requirements, and specialty training if you’re specialized.
Your care and respect for animals was your reason for becoming a veterinarian. So, to find out that someone has complained about you to the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine can be devastating.
If the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine gets a complaint from an owner, colleague or facility about a licensed veterinarian, the board must act. A board representative will contact you and you are required to cooperate in their investigation of you. But you should know that you are entitled to due process and have rights in the process. You can hire a lawyer to help protect your license and allow for a fair investigation into any allegations against you. With your livelihood on the line, you need a skilled advocate from LicenseSure Professional License Defense.
Reasons for Veterinary Board Investigations
A complaint can come from anyone you’ve dealt with professionally or in the court system. Some situations that typically cause the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine to start an investigation includes:
• Billing fraud: overbilling clients and public and private insurance, charging for procedures that weren’t performed, and other fraud
• An arrest or conviction, especially if it is for substance abuse or an intoxication offense
• Not reporting an arrest or conviction
• Harm or death to a patient
• Patient abuse of any kind
• Unauthorized prescribing of medication
• Substance abuse or alcohol abuse
Veterinary Board Investigations and the Disciplinary Process
The Commonwealth of Virginia follows specific investigatory and disciplinary procedures outlined in the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine's rules and regulations.
The process includes a complaint, investigation, hearing, and appeal of an adverse decision.
Here’s a peek into the process:
1. Complaint: The process begins with a complaint to the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine; The Board will check if the allegations violate Virginia's professional standards or laws.
2. Investigation: The Board will provide you with the written complaint and might ask for a response to the complaint or documents. The Board may also require an informal hearing or meeting to ask you additional questions about the complaint. The Board may find nothing was done wrong, and my dismiss the complaint if they think it has no basis.
3. Consent Order: If the Board believes the complaint allegations, then it can issue sanctions against you. But before that they will try to negotiate a consent order, and this will avoid having to attend a formal hearing. At this time, you and your lawyer talk about whether this is a good option to quickly resolve the complaint.
4. Formal Complaint and Hearing: If you disagree with the Board and don’t want to agree to a consent order then you may have a formal hearing before the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine and if you’re found to have violated a law or regulation, they will punish or sanction you.
5. Appeal: If the Board rules against you, you have a short time to appeal their decision.
Common Discipline from the Veterinary Board
The Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine has disciplinary authority to punish you for violations of law, regulations and rules of veterinary practice. Common punishments can include:
• Revoking your license to practice veterinary medicine.
• Suspending your license for a specific time period
• Restricting your ability to practice, including whom you can treat, perform surgery on, or prescribe medication to
• Placing conditions on keeping your veterinarian license, i.e. more veterinary medicine education, substance or alcohol abuse treatment, counseling, or supervised probation
• Fines and restitution
• A public reprimand
• A private reprimand
Contact Licensure Professional License Defense for Help With a Veterinary Board Investigation
You might think you can simply talk to the Board and make this complaint go away on your own by giving your side of the story. This rarely works. Remember, the Board will use anything you say or write when dealing with them during any investigation against you in a disciplinary matter.
Without knowing how the Board’s disciplinary process works, you will have issues negotiating a consent order or trying your case at a formal hearing without knowing about professional licensing law and administrative law and trial procedures. An experienced professional license defense lawyer can help you make your best case to the Board and save your career.
You should know that professional discipline is public and can stay with you forever. This is the reason you need an experienced professional license lawyer fighting to help you keep your veterinary license and standing up for your rights. The professional license defense Team at Licensure can help.
How the Licensure Professional License Defense Can Fight for You
If you're facing a complaint from the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine, you don't have to deal with this by yourself.
The expert team at LicenseSure Professional License Defense can assist you. We’ve been defending licensed professionals like you for years. Give them a call today at ________________ or contact them online to schedule your consultation.