Cleaning House at the Board

Since March 1, 2007, the public and the profession have been treated to a long list of strange and exotic charges concerning the activities of the California Board of Chiropractic Examiners (BCE).

As chairman of the board, I speak only for myself. There presently are six members on this board with six different points of view. With the exception of a retired judge, none of us is a lawyer. The purpose of the board is to protect the public from those in the profession who morally, physically or financially might compromise the welfare of those we are privileged to serve.

Each of the board members is pulled from private life - with virtually no remuneration - to adjudicate cases presented to us. When licensure cases are presented to the board, each case already has been examined by legal experts and been fully litigated in a courtroom. The administrative law judge then makes a written decision. It is then the duty of board members to review and vote to either accept or reject. We have no input as to the character or volume of the cases we examine.

At first glance, this would seem to be quite simple. So, where is the problem and why all the controversy? The answer, quite simply, involves unhappy members of the BCE staff we inherited when we came to office. An administrative staff is supposed to work for the board, and the board for the public. The staff is composed of personnel whose salaries are paid by the members of the chiropractic profession and not the taxpayer, under the protection of the Civil Service Act.

Here is what went wrong. Almost from the beginning, I would receive complaints about curious actions taken by certain staff members, including the bizarre behavior of a certain "chiropractic consultant." That consultant engaged in aggressive harassment against chiropractors for apparently trivial matters. The consultant seemed to obsess over the placement of the word "chiropractor" after a practitioner's name more than the more egregious activities of the genuine scum in our profession. After months of these complaints, I thought it would be appropriate to look into the "consultant's" background. Listed on her vitae was her membership in the anti-chiropractic National Association for Chiropractic Medicine. This membership is like belonging to The National Association of Pilots Against Flying. It also was perceived that too many staff members had a low opinion of chiropractic. Frankly, too many staff members made the BCE a hostile environment to the chiropractic profession. The BCE staff had an "us vs. them" attitude. It was appropriately felt by the board members that we had to do something to change the institutional behavior that harmed the focus of the board, which of course was and is to protect the public. Here are some of the nonsense charges against our cleaning-house efforts:

• The executive officer was a member of the staff for 10 years. She was removed from an "at-will" position. "At-will" means one can be discharged for any reason. She was upset and went to the press. Because her discharge was done legally, she is no longer working for the BCE.
• All BCE meetings are open to the public. Some press accounts claimed decisions were made without public comment. That's untrue. Only matters of litigation and personnel are kept private to protect the privacy of those discussed. The public and chiropractors always are invited to attend.
• The board was dissatisfied with the conduct of a particular BCE consultant. That consultant faces litigation from a number of aggrieved chiropractors, plus suffered from numerous conflicts of interest. The consultant went to the legislature making unsupported charges that the board was too friendly to chiropractic. That consultant resigned last summer.
• Finally, one of the silliest and most misunderstood charges was that the board was attempting to influence the outcome of a case in litigation regarding manipulation under anesthesia (MUA). We have no interest as to what a court may do in Stanislaus County. However, when the board was asked its position as to the legality of the MUA procedure, we merely restated what this board stated more than 20 years ago: MUA practice is a legitimate chiropractic/medical procedure. Understanding chiropractic is way beyond the comprehension of the "drive-by" Sacramento Bee reporters.

The problems began when a couple of aggrieved staff members complained to the media, which quickly made it a political cause fueled by the governor's adversaries. As I have said in the past, it could have been the dental board - but it was the chiropractic board that just happened to have two members who were friends of the governor.

We are aware of the confusion that some in the profession must have experienced. After all, we are agents of change and had to clean up a mess left to us to address. Disgruntled staff members went to the press and the governor's enemies in the legislature and were given ample publicity by the Sacramento Bee. None of the charges by disgruntled staff members was proven. In fact, all disgruntled staff members have been replaced with a professional staff and an excellent executive director who are dedicated in following the guidelines of the Chiropractic Act of 1922. We are especially pleased with the support from the profession, particularly from the ICA and the ICAC.

I am proud of this board. I am proud to be even a small part of it. The BCE has no agenda other than to protect the public so that chiropractors can continue to offer a safe alternative to drugs and surgery.