The Healthcare Alliance for Regulatory Board Reform (HARBR) is an organization for all healthcare professionals – licensed and unlicensed. Although some of our current members have interest in what boards regard as a quasi-legislative processes (rule making and policy development), most have gathered together to form this organization due to direct, unfair board disciplinary processes which have cost them dearly. Through our group efforts we have become much stronger than we have been as isolated individuals, and we have been able to take effective action. Over the past couple of years (pre-HARBR), many of us have testified before our legislatures and have stopped bad laws from being passed.

HARBR is heavily rooted in Oregon and at this time, our membership consists primarily of Physician’s, Psychologists, and Counselor-Therapists. In Oregon, this means healthcare professionals licensed by the Oregon Medical Board (OMB), the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners (OBPE), and the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors &Therapists (OBLPCT).

We believe that the nature of our make up is no accident. It so happens that each of these healthcare regulatory boards are represented by the same Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney, Senior Assistant Attorney General Warren Foote.

In response to a complaint against SAAG Warren Foote (and others) to the Oregon State Bar signed by 12 individual HARBR members on November 29, 2016, Warren Foote’s attorney, SAAG Stephanie Thompson attempted to suggest that our signers were little more than “sour grapes” complainants who all had a grudge against Foote. The implication was that we were a lot of vigilantes acting out a vendetta. The truth is that, despite deep problems with healthcare regulatory boards in general, Warren Foote is a special problem. We believe in his work with each of the above boards, Warren Foote has violated numerous Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethical Standards) held by the Oregon and American Bar Associations. It is only natural that those professionals he has aggressed gather together to complain to the proper authority.

HARBR’s membership also includes nurses, psychologist associates, and unlicensed healthcare professionals. Inasmuch as unlicensed healthcare professional are actively hunted down and prosecuted by these boards – often unfairly or unlawfully, they share an interest in healthcare regulatory board reform as well.

We have members in others states, including North Carolina, Massachusetts, and California. We are working on a Texas affiliation and welcome healthcare professionals from all states and abroad.

Not all of our members have experienced problems with healthcare regulatory boards directly. Some of our members have learned of the problematic features of board conduct from colleagues. Some of our members are licensed and practicing. Some of our members have been so aggressed by their boards that they are no longer practicing. Some of members are patients or clients who have been impacted by problematic board conduct. Some are friends and family who’ve been impacted, and some of our menbers are professionals who are being aggressed by healthcare regulatory boards at this very moment as you read this.

If you are not already a member of HARBR, we encourage you to become one – to lend us your support, and to recruit as many others as you can so that we can advance our cause.

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One of the primary goals of the Healthcare Alliance for Regulatory Board Reform (HARBR) is to help healthcare professionals when they are being aggressed by their healthcare regulatory board (or a healthcare regulatory board). One of the reasons this is a priority is due to the urgency of the matter when a healthcare professional is notified that there is a complaint, an investigation, or a proposed disciplinary action against them. HARBR regards such matters as emergencies and would like every practicing healthcare professional to know that these actions are emergencies.

Without delving into the psychological dynamics at this point, HARBR has found that far too many professionals sign some sort of agreement with their boards. Although HARBR is working on ways for licensees and other targeted professionals to rescind such agreements we do not have that worked out at present. Under the duress of possible board action against ones license and livelihood, many are lead to believe that being “cooperative” will make things better. It doesn’t. We advise licensees and other under fire by healthcare licensing boards to SIGN NOTHING and AGREE TO NOTHING until they have been in touch with a good attorney (we can make recommendations) AND with us.

Dealing with licensing boards (as well as hospital boards and boards of professional organizations) once you are under fire is crazy, crazy, crazy business. It involves “law” which bears no resemblance to anything one thinks of when they think of law. It will gaslight* you and perplex your attorney. If you are under fire from a healthcare regulatory or licensing board, you NEED to work with us. Remember, we are not the government nor sales people.

Due to the groundswell of objections to the way healthcare boards operate, an increasing number of attorneys, at long last, are training and offering services in the defense of healthcare licensees under fire from healthcare boards. We at HARBOR, nevertheless are not ready to simply advise people to get attorneys. We DO advise, however, that defense attorneys be consulted, immediately upon notice that some action is, or might, being taken against you. Unless specifically stated to the contrary, HARBR members are NOT attorneys and HARBR is in no way a law firm. There are things attorneys can do for you that we cannot, and it is important for you to know, as a disclaimer, that NOTHING HARBR or any HARBR member tells you should be regarded as legal advice or relied upon for legal decisions. We are, however, smart and experienced professionals who likely know many important things your attorney does not.

HARBR has a great moral compass. We DO believe there are practicing healthcare professionals who need redirection, restriction, retraining, and at times, as necessary, prohibition from practice. The current system however has no basis on which it can claim to accurately separate the “good” from the ‘bad.” This is where long term regulatory board reform comes in. This is also where HARBR comes in as part of an emergency response team. The current system is not just and we are here to change that. We don’t want GOOD healthcare practitioners to be UNJUSTY be put out of their careers.

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The Healthcare Alliance for Regulatory Board Reform (HARBR) welcome judges and attorneys to our site.

It is our ambition to be a good source of insight, information, an exposure for matters related to healthcare regulatory board reform, especially as related to fair disciplinary processes.

You are free to peruse the entire site, but you may wish to check here for material our people feel to be especially relevant to attorneys and judges.

We have included this section on our site for a number of reasons, but one reason stands out. In our collective experience, we have found that the attorneys we have hired are not well versed Administrative Law, or they lack the skills to win cases swiftly and definitively at the Administrative Level – that is, in way which will help a licensee-respondent prevail before the licensee’s career is inevitably destroyed.

HARBR is comprised of people from all walks of life. We do not have a unified political affiliation. We have, however, become acutely aware of the variance between Administrative Law and the Law of the Land – that is, the Constitution of the United States.

We understand that Administrative Law has been around since the dawn of civilization and that it has take numerous shapes and forms. Such is the nature of Administrative Law. Such is the nature of the problem. Administrative law is arbitrary and capricious. It is as as fickle as any bureaucrat serving out a term or any career office holder in a personally unaffected position of sovereign immunity. We are aware of the history of the Rule of Law and its development. We believe that Administrative Law is one and the same as the Rule of Man – that is, that it is lawless. We believe that Administrative law as it exists presently in the United States is an extension of Administrative Law as it has always been, and our duty to oppose it, an extension of that which it has always been. The war on injustice is perennial, but always, too few people fight it. HARBR is fighting it and we are asking good attorneys and judges to join us in this fight.

Unless under circumstances in which it would be ethically impermissible for you to do so, please feel free to contact us. We would love to talk with you.

Most urgently, we wish to make ourselves available to attorneys who are presently representing licensees against healthcare regulatory board allegations, or about to do so. In these cases, we strongly advise defense attorneys to contact us as soon as possible. It is very true to our collective experiences; justice delayed is justice denied.

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The Healthcare Alliance for Regulatory Board Reform (HARBR) is named as it is because the name is descriptive of our mission. Putting out fires is always a priority because of its urgency. Fire prevention is a priority because it is not in the best interest of persons, organizations or nations to live in a continual state of urgency.

In addition to assisting healthcare professionals secure fair hearing when they are in the cross-hairs of a regulatory board complaint, investigation or disciplinary action, HARBR works with lawmakers and rulemakers toward the creation of laws and rules which will assure healthcare providers of fair treatment if and when they are ever the recipient of a complaint or allegation.

“Good” healthcare providers need to be able to concentrate on their practices. They can only do this if, as good providers, they can feel very secure that they can make short and respectful work of any claims against them. “Good” healtchcare providers should not fear “the law.”

HARBR believes that “bad” providers should be called out and that there should be consequences for “bad practice. Whether this is facilitated by a fair regulatory board, or through the process of reputation and natural selection in the free market, “bad practice must meet with appropriate consequences. Inasmuch as HARBR believes the present set of cookie-cutter healthcare regulatory boards across the nation have NO evidence to show they can reliably differentiate the good and bad, the present system needs reform.

Despite HARBR’s descriptive name, not all HARBR members are “reformers.” Some are abolitionists, and are so for different reasons. One of those reasons is the belief that the healthcare regulatory system, as it is managed by functionally independent boards with no oversight, is so dysfunctional and broken that it needs to be raised and rebuilt. The reformers believe that something as simple as depriving boards of adjudication privileges may suffice.

Activism:

“Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.”

Isaac Newton wrote three Laws of Motion in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687. Lex I, above translates:

“Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.”

To paraphrase Newton’s First Law of Motion (which I will call a law of “action and change:) in two parts:

• An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless a force acts upon it.
• An object that is in motion will not change its velocity or direction unless a force acts upon it.

HARBR is smaller than it’s mission. HARBR’s mission is to bring about reform in healthcare regulatory board structures. This mission is built upon a foundation of a demand for justice, period.

We invite activists everywhere to join us and to act with us – individuals, like-minded groups and organizations – social justice movers and fighters. Put us together and we have Mass. This is a Movement. We must act.

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