Saying the COVID-19 pandemic has put a strain on doctors, leaders of the state’s largest physicians association are asking the Florida Board of Medicine to waive licensing fees for the next two years.
Leaders of the Florida Medical Association sent a letter to Board of Medicine Chairman Zachariah Zachariah, a South Florida physician, asking that the board consider a request to “reduce licensure and renewal fees to 0” for 2021 and 2022, a move that would help about 73,000 in-state and out-of-state doctors with active Florida licenses.
“More than ever, physicians are under extreme stress: faced with practicing medicine during a pandemic, worrying about patients, worrying about contracting and spreading COVID-19, worrying about the bottom line, worrying about having to lay off loyal employees and worrying about being laid off themselves, compounded by feelings of isolation and fatigue with no end in sight,” Florida Medical Association leaders Ronald Giffler and Michael Patete wrote in a July 10 letter to Zachariah. “This incomplete list of stressors will have a long-lasting ripple effect within the practice of medicine. The Florida Board of Medicine is in a unique position to help alleviate the financial burden Florida physicians are facing.“
Giffler was president of the association at the time of the letter, and Patete was installed Sunday as his successor.
Accompanying the request was a research article by the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School that showed primary-care physician practices would lose $65,000 in revenue per physician this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. That translates to about a $15 billion loss to primary care practices nationwide.
Florida Medical Association General Counsel Jeff Scott said Florida physicians are feeling the pinch.
“We’ve heard from a lot of physicians who are having a real hard time with the pandemic. A lot of it stems from the ban on elective procedures,” Scott said, referring to a March 20 executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis that temporarily halted many inpatient procedures because of the pandemic.
“There are a lot of physicians who saw their revenues dry up significantly. So we’ve been actively exploring ways we can help physicians,” Scott said. “It’s not a huge amount of money, but it would be something that would certainly help them out a little.”
Physicians pay $389 every other year to renew their licenses. The fees are collected by the state and used to cover money the Florida Board of Medicine spends on regulating physicians.
While the FMA asked that the fees be waived for the next two years, Scott said the Board of Medicine could approve a modified request or reject it altogether.
“They have the option to not do anything. They can say, ‘We can’t afford to move it to zero, but we can give you 50 percent off,’” Scott said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Zachariah has agreed to consider the FMA’s request at a Board of Medicine meeting Friday.
If the board agrees to waive the fees, it would reduce the amount of money it has to regulate physicians. But a report from the Florida Department of Health shows that money may not be a problem.
The Board of Medicine was projected to have a $21.3 million surplus during the 2021-2022 fiscal year and a $25 million surplus for 2022-2023.
Scott said the FMA has made a similar request to the Board of Osteopathic Medicine. As of June 30, 2019, there were 8,267 in-state and out-of-state osteopathic physicians who had active Florida licenses. Similar to the Board of Medicine the Board of Osteopathic Medicine is projected to have a surplus for the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 fiscal years.
