IS YOUR PRACTICE SITE PROPERLY LICENSED?
By: Douglas M. White, DPT, OCS

The recent passage of the law to reduce auto insurance fraud brings to the forefront a related longstanding law relative to clinic licensure.  Massachusetts law requires that facilities which provide “physical rehabilitation” be licensed by the Department of Public Health (DPH) unless they are “wholly owned and controlled by one or more practitioners so associated…” In practical terms this language means; in Massachusetts if you practice physical therapy in a facility it must either be licensed by the DPH or be completely owned and controlled by physical therapist(s) or other medical providers who practice at that site. The relative portions of the law are cited below. Please refer to the full text of the law and to the DPH regulations for hospitals, nursing homes or clinics as the situation warrants.

CHAPTER 111. PUBLIC HEALTH
Chapter 111: Section 52 Definitions applicable to sections 51 to 56, inclusive
 ""Clinic'', any entity, however organized, whether conducted for profit or not for profit, which is advertised, announced, established, or maintained for the purpose of providing ambulatory medical, surgical, dental, physical rehabilitation, or mental health services. In addition, ""clinic'' shall include any entity, however organized, whether conducted for profit or not for profit, which is advertised, announced, established, or maintained under a name which includes the word ""clinic'', ""dispensary'', or ""institute'', and which suggests that ambulatory medical, surgical, dental, physical rehabilitation, or mental health services are rendered therein. With respect to any entity which is not advertised, announced, established, or maintained under one of the names in the preceding sentence, ""clinic'' shall not include a medical office building, or one or more practitioners engaged in a solo or group practice, whether conducted for profit or not for profit, and however organized, so long as such practice is wholly owned and controlled by one or more of the practitioners so associated, or, in the case of a not for profit organization, its only members are one or more of the practitioners so associated or a clinic established solely to provide service to employees or students of such corporation or institution. For purposes of this section, clinic shall not include a clinic conducted by a hospital licensed under section fifty-one or by the federal government or the commonwealth.
 
DISPENSARIES
Chapter 111: Section 51 Hospitals, institutions for unwed mothers, or clinics; licensing
Section 51. The department shall issue for a term of two years, and shall renew for like terms, a license, subject to revocation by it for cause, to any person, city, town, or county it deems responsible and suitable to establish or maintain a hospital, an institution for the care of unwed mothers or a clinic, which meets the requirements of the department established in accordance with its rules and regulations. In the case of the transfer of ownership of a hospital, an institution for the care of unwed mothers or a clinic, the application of the new owner for a license, when filed with the department on the date of transfer of ownership, shall have the effect of a license for a period of three months. If a license has not been issued by the department upon the expiration of said three months period, all the patients shall be transferred or discharged from such hospital or such institution for unwed mothers, and the hospital, institution for unwed mothers, or clinic, as the case may be, shall cease operating….