Spread across South Carolina is a population of more than five million people, many of them may need occupational therapy at some point in their lives. Since that’s your specialty, that means a steady and rewarding stream of work for you—provided that your license remains valid and intact.
Unfortunately, lots of things can happen to put your occupational therapy license at risk. If you’re facing a disciplinary process, bring the LLF National Law Firm Professional License Defense to the table as quickly as possible. Call their offices today at 888.535.3686 or fill out this contact form.
Who is Responsible for Occupational Therapy Licenses in South Carolina?
The South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation houses the South Carolina Board of Occupational Therapy (SCBOT), which is responsible for creating and implementing all the rules and policies governing occupational therapy in the state.
Per the South Carolina Occupational Therapy Practice Act, earning a license requires graduating from a program preapproved by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE) or the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). You also need to have at least six months of field experience under your belt, a passing score on the board certification exam, and good standing with the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT).
Other than that, you can choose a path for your career, which usually involves specializing in subfields. General health and wellness, kinesiology, geriatric care, child development, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and treatment for injuries, illnesses, disabilities, and disorders are all common examples.
Regardless of your specialization, your focus will primarily be on helping people learn to manage or overcome health conditions that affect their independence. Whether a care plan aims to improve the patient’s strength, flexibility, mobility, mental health, or emotional self-regulation, the goal is usually to help them become capable of performing as many everyday tasks as possible. Most South Carolinian occupational therapists use their skills in settings like hospitals, schools, medical clinics, and assisted living facilities.
Occupational Therapy Professional License Violations in South Carolina
Medical professionals throughout the Palmetto State strive to provide the highest quality healthcare possible to their patients. For occupational therapists, that means complying with the South Carolina Occupational Therapy Act and board regulations, which describe their duties and responsibilities, as well as what counts as a violation and what happens if you commit one. Violations include:
Failing to Continue Education
As mentioned earlier, continuing education courses allow occupational therapists to pursue the specialties that interest them. However, they’re also a requirement for license renewal. If you don’t complete enough coursework by the time your license is set to expire, the board will likely impose sanctions.
Conviction of a Crime
If you have a criminal record or obtain one while licensed, the board may consider you more difficult to trust with important and sensitive matters like patient care or confidentiality. This is especially true if your crime involves bullying, harassment, stalking, assault, theft, embezzlement, substance abuse, or similar activities. That’s why it could result in disciplinary measures with the board.
Immoral or Unprofessional Conduct
Any behavior that would be deemed immoral or unprofessional could get you in trouble with the board, even if it doesn’t lead to a criminal conviction. In addition to the crimes previously mentioned, actions that could lead to sanctions include manipulation, false promises, discrimination, slander, breach of confidentiality, inappropriate sexual relationships (even if they’re between consenting adults), and physical, emotional, or verbal abuse.
Fraud
Proper occupational therapy relies on honesty and integrity. You can’t promote untruthful or misleading advertising, create or forge false records, pretend to perform services that you don’t have the skills or authority to do, or offer services to someone who won’t benefit from them.
Also, while in the process of obtaining or renewing your license, you mustn’t present your application with qualifications or requirements that you haven’t earned or fulfilled. Furthermore, you’re not allowed to aid an unqualified person in tricking employers, clients, or the board to let them work as an OT, nor can you allow them to use your license to impersonate you. Similarly, you can’t attempt to sell, barter, or alter your license.
All these activities are considered fraudulent, not to mention potentially harmful to patients, and could provoke severe discipline from the board.
Negligence or Incompetence
A successful occupational therapist requires a thorough understanding of your field and an ability to create and carry out effective treatment plans. You must also have the mental and emotional capacity to pay attention to your patients and their needs.
If you consistently ignore or neglect your patients, put them through the wrong treatments, or consistently fail to facilitate their healing or self-improvement, you might be guilty of negligence or incompetence. Either way, you’re likely harming patients more than helping them. The board may respond to this issue with sanctions.
Sanctions in Another State
Perhaps you moved to South Carolina after getting your license sanctioned by a board in another state. Unfortunately, the SCBOT could see records of those sanctions and may choose to uphold or even escalate them. After all, in most cases, state boards assume that there are good reasons for license sanctions if they’re imposed.
The Disciplinary Process of Occupational Therapy License Violations in South Carolina
Mistakes and poor judgment are inevitable, so the SCBOT has a disciplinary process in place to address code violations committed by its occupational therapists. Knowing about the process beforehand can help you prepare for each of its phases if you’re accused of doing something wrong. This is what it’s like:
Acceptance of Complaint
Complaints about licensed professionals must be submitted in writing, which is easy with online complaint forms. The SCBOT accepts complaints pertaining to occupational therapists, reviewing them to see if they appear credible and fall under their jurisdiction. It typically dismisses complaints that don’t fit those criteria. Otherwise, it proceeds to the next step.
Investigation
The board has to determine whether you’re guilty of the alleged violation, so it arranges for an investigator to look further into it. Over the course of weeks or even months, the investigator compiles all the evidence and information they can find about the case, such as photographs, videos, recordings, documents, communications, witness statements, and victim testimonies. They might also issue subpoenas, inspect the environment(s) where the violation(s) occurred, or get expert analysis on specialized or niche aspects of the case.
Consent Agreement
If the investigation concludes that you are guilty of a violation, the board might try to resolve the situation quickly with a consent agreement. It would invite you to accept whatever sanctions the board wants to impose without first going through a hearing and adjudication process, which could have a less favorable outcome than what the agreement offers. Declining the agreement and contesting the investigation prompts the board to schedule a formal hearing.
Formal Hearing
Although the investigation should provide plenty of information, the formal hearing lets you present new evidence, testimonies, arguments, and legal interpretations to the board. You can also cross-examine witnesses or challenge expert opinions on the subject matter of the complaint.
Ideally, the LLF National Law Firm Professional License Defense Team would have been with you through every step of the disciplinary process up until this point, but this is the most important moment to have them on your side. They can join you at the hearing and advocate for you confidently and thoughtfully.
Board Decision
After the hearing, the board will make a final decision about whether and how to sanction you. These are the disciplinary measures they could enforce:
Restrictions
To your relief, the board may allow you to continue working as an occupational therapist without any interruptions. However, they might impose restrictions on your license, meaning that your authority and scope would be limited to certain times, places, fields, or tasks.
It’s not the harshest sanction to absorb, but it does have several downsides. For instance, you couldn’t expand your skills or opportunities by doing jobs that don’t comply with the restrictions, so you’d have few positive updates to give your resume. You might also have trouble centering your personal life around the most inconvenient restrictions. Lastly, your co-workers might resent you for leaving them to handle tasks you wouldn’t be allowed to do, which won’t help your networking efforts.
Probation
As with restrictions, probation wouldn’t stop you from working in occupational therapy, but it could make your job harder. Conditions of probation often include taking remedial education courses, submitting to supervision from a colleague, and/or regularly checking in with the board about your progress.
Some people feel that probation is suffocating, inconvenient, or even embarrassing; no one likes to feel micromanaged or infantilized. If that’s how it seems to you, it could reduce your motivation or sense of morale, potentially worsening your performance and setting you up for additional sanctions.
Suspension
A license suspension is basically a forced break in your employment. You couldn’t practice occupational therapy again until a certain amount of time had passed and/or you met the board’s requirements for reinstatement.
Since it means that you didn’t permanently lose your license, a suspension could sound like good news. Still, it has significant drawbacks, such as the fact that you would have to deal with the stress of supporting yourself with a different job until you could be an OT again. Furthermore, your skills might become less refined with a lack of use, you couldn’t learn new ones for a while, and many prospective employers would be skeptical of the gap in your employment history.
Revocation or Denial
If the board chooses to revoke or deny your occupational therapy license, the consequences will essentially match those of a suspension, except it’s permanent. You could apply for reinstatement after three years, but you would also need to submit a petition. After that, the majority of the board must approve it.
As you can see, even with a path toward reinstatement, there’s no guarantee you would be successful. In fact, regaining your occupational therapy license could be more challenging than obtaining it the first time. You could end up being forced to choose a new career.
Monetary Penalty
One of the most effective sanctions is a monetary penalty. The SCBOT can demand fines of $2,000 per violation, up to $10,000, helping to cover the costs of operations or investigations while dissuading you from re-offending or moving on to an even worse violation.
If the board doesn’t combine a monetary penalty with another sanction, you might be thankful that you can otherwise keep working as normal. Nevertheless, the fines can be burdensome to pay off, affecting your financial stability and limiting your options for required continuing education courses.
Why Partner with the LLF National Law Firm?
Even minor violations and sanctions can have long-lasting and devastating ripple effects on the rest of your career. Fighting a complaint alone isn’t worth the risk. You need one of the finest legal teams South Carolina can offer.
That describes the LLF National Law Firm. Armed with extensive knowledge of occupational therapy license law in South Carolina and driven by a determination to see their clients thrive, the LLF National Law Firm Professional License Defense Team boasts a long track record of triumph in cases like yours. Working with them all but guarantees that you’ll be able to move on from this stressful and frustrating situation with your career and dignity intact.
Keep Working as an Occupational Therapist in South Carolina
South Carolina is a wonderful place to develop a career in occupational therapy, so don’t let anything stop you. As soon as you discover a complaint or report that might threaten your job or license, look for a reliable source of support and protection. You’ll find it in the LLF National Law Firm Professional License Defense Team, so call them today at 888.535.3686 or fill out this contact form to schedule a consultation.