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Annual Report 2015 - 2016
APPENDIX: INFORMATION TABLE
REDUCTION OF YEAR-OLD CASES
PROCESSING AGED INVENTORY
The Prosecution Services Unit (PSU) is responsible
for the review, recommendation for action, and
prosecution of alleged violations by licensees of the
practice acts within the jurisdiction of MQA.
PSU identified action steps necessary to its processes
that will reduce or otherwise close these investigation
or disciplinary proceedings. Currently, MQA has
approximately 1,901 investigation or disciplinary
proceedings that were not brought before the Division
of Administrative Hearings under Chapter 120, Florida
Statutes, or otherwise not completed within one year
after the initial filing of a complaint.
Before PSU could take the first step to identify which
cases met the criteria for inclusion in the reduction
plan, PSU met with MQA’s Bureau of Operations and
Bureau of Enforcement to design new reports for
gathering the necessary data. Once the reports were
available, analysis of the cases and creation of a
plan began.
Plans for reduction of year old cases in the boards
with the greatest increases include determination of
the minimum number of aging cases required to be
presented to Probable Cause Panels (PCP) over the
course of the year. With the cooperation of the boards
and panel members, more frequent PCP meetings are
being scheduled to handle the higher volume of cases.
Additional actions are also planned.
As an example of one plan of action, PSU established
a Focused Year-and-Older Action Team to be solely
responsible for aging cases review, case triage and
taking action to process cases.
Areas identified as requiring process improvement
include monitoring for:
· pending/overdue/returned
supplemental investigations;
· status changes in the MQA database;
· confirmation of service (i.e., hand service,
publication, etc.);
· follow up on settlement offers; and/or
· cases that can be presented to the board
(i.e., waivers, Election of Rights (EOR) returned
but not logged, etc.).
DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE
HEARINGS REFERRALS
Another delay in processing year and older cases can
occur when the respondent requests a formal hearing.
In support of its commitment to referring cases to
the Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) when
it becomes apparent a case cannot or will not be
settled, PSU implemented a Litigation Action Team.
The action team is tasked with prioritizing the cases
and being the lead attorneys in litigation.
This will increase efficiency by:
· allowing a core of attorneys to focus on drafting
Administrative Complaints, Closing Orders
and Letters of Guidance, thereby increasing
production of PCP/Board ready cases;
· allowing DOAH cases to be processed faster; and,
· possibly yielding higher settlement rates for
Post-PCP cases.
PSU is aware that for this plan to be successful, it
will need to keep up with the current caseload while
also processing the year and older cases. Since the
2014-2015 fiscal year, PSU is committed to utilizing
attorneys across teams and sections to assist in
prosecuting cases.
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