If you are a current Georgia physician or licensed veterinarian who is practicing under a consent order due to substance related disorders, you should strongly consider signing up with the Georgia Professional Health Program. In most cases, the Georgia medical board or Georgia veterinary medicine board enacted a consent order to ensure you participated in the proper long-term care for your substance abuse disorder. In such cases, the Georgia PHP can provide this care. This makes the consent order unnecessary.

Most of our current participants who previously operated under a consent order from the Georgia Composite Board of Medical Examiners or the Georgia Board of Veterinary Medicine have had their consent orders terminated upon successful entry into our monitoring process. This often eliminates difficulties with hospital medical staff applications, malpractice coverage, and third-party reimbursement. In the case of some specialty boards, our participants are allowed to re-credential in their specialty after joining the Georgia PHP.

This isn’t to say that you can sign up with the Georgia PHP and not continue your treatment and recovery process. The Georgia PHP, like the Georgia Medical Board and the Georgia Board of Veterinary Medicine, is committed to excellent care for our participants and for the safety of the general public. Part of our agreement with you is that you will participate in needed care. The rare participant who flagrantly discards proper treatment will go through a series of steps to reenter recovery. If the Georgia PHP exhausts the steps, our only choice would be to ask for the assistance of the Georgia Medical Board or the Georgia Board of Veterinary Medicine in helping you get back on track.