Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Part I: Introduction
Louise B. Andrew MD JD and Ronald Chapman JD
Physician Health Programs (PHPs,) are organized and
characterized as private non-profit 501c3 educational public
charity organizations. PHPs grew out state medical society
impaired physician committees staffed by colleagues,
themselves in recovery, to assist other physicians recovering
from alcoholism and addictions while retaining their own ability to
practice medicine. Such organizations, from which chapters of the
American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and subsequently
state PHPs arose1, were designed to assist and advocate for
physicians having significant and potentially impairing substance
abuse problems. Even today, most PHPs are led by physicians
who were drawn to the enterprise by their own experiences in
recovery.
Over the past two decades, PHPs have extended their mission to
include initial assessment, treatment referral and long-term
monitoring of many other conditions, including mental illness and
behavioral problems (e.g. disruptive behavior, boundary
violations etc.). In many states they lack leadership or staff with
training or ABMS certification in applicable specialties such as
psychiatry. This expansion in scope has been accomplished with
the full support of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB),
individual state MLBs, state medical societies, and the Federation
of State Physician Health Programs (FSPHP), the organizing trade
association of PHPs.
There are 482 State PHPs, operating in close collaboration with
corresponding MLBs. A PHPs functional role may be specified in
the states statutes, regulations and/or in policy, typically tightly
interwoven with state Medical Practice Acts (MPAs), statutes
governing both the MLB and the practice of medicine for each
state.
1Parker, J, Abuse and Neglect in U.S.A. Residential Treatment Centers
at 60, accessed 3/4/106 at http://www.heal-online.org/unjp2011.pdf
2 Including DC, list accessed 2/28/16 at http://www.fsphp.org/stateprograms
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)