From 1993 to 1995, Medical Care Development Incorporated, a nonprofit organization based in Augusta, Maine, spearheaded an effort to develop a coordinated health professions licensing structure for Maine.

Key Results

Under the grant, project staff accomplished the following:

• Formed a 13-person advisory committee, consisting of many of Maine's leading health care policy experts.
• Assembled a task force of more than 160 people to examine the issues.
• Developed a report for the governor and state legislature, Improving Public Policy for Regulating Maine's Health Professionals.

Key Recommendations

In the report, the project task force made the following recommendations:

• Standardize terms in Maine's law regulating health professionals and streamline the credentialing process.
• Develop consensus about definitions of professional competency and quality of care.
• Authorize practitioners through practice acts to provide services to the fullest extent of their competencies.
• Recognize changing practice setting, specialties, and organizational entities in regulatory policy.
• Create a template and standardize the grounds for discipline for all health professions by statute.
• Promote consumer understanding about the competencies of health practitioners and the regulatory system.
• Develop public policy in areas interacting with the regulation of health professionals, and when appropriate, advocate for changes in federal policy.

Funding

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided $44,999 in funding from September 1993 to August 1995 to support the project.