Friday, July 20, 2007

Georgia licensure board needs a Renovation

8 am- woke, showered and began to collect final items to put in car. Plan was to leave at 10:30 am to begin my drive to Boston.

10:30am- called company to see what hotel I was driving to in Boston. Rep from company, "well, we have some bad news".

Georgia has decided that they need, oh, 30 days to verify that I hold a license in that state to practice Speech Pathology. Not to GRANT a license, just to make a statement saying, "yep, she's an SLP". They've had it for the last 10 days or so. I've got another week or so that they could potentially hold up my paperwork. Then, and only then, will the Massachusetts board look at my paperwork and grant me a license in that state. The only thing they are missing is the verification from Georgia. All the other states were able to send verification within 3 business days.

So the Monday start date? Delayed indefinitely. Job? Up in the air. My mood? Quite low, thank you.

The thing that infuriates me, other than the fact that Virginia, Maryland and the national boards are able to verify within days, NOT WEEKS, is that you can verify my Georgia licensure online at their web page. Just type my name in and it says "active and in good standing" with my expiration date available.

Massachusetts, unfortunately, needs it in writing directly from the Georgia Board.

Why do I pay dues to boards that prevent me from gaining jobs? Really, I pay Georgia XX amount every 2 years to "upkeep" my licensure. I never ask anything from that money- except that they make sure we all are upkeeping our licensure and hooligans aren't practicing SLPs in the state of Georgia. They, in turn, take 30 days to complete a task that would take the average joe 2 minutes on the internet and other similar state agencies 3 days to complete.

I used to love Georgia. I'm thinking of letting that particular licensure go inactive due to this incompetency. 30 days to say, "yes, she's an SLP without any black marks against her." They need to send their people over to the other boards in order to learn a better way of doing things.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more! My CFY was delayed for three weeks because the GA License board requires an official transcript complete with the MS degree. Here's the glitch: in most institutes of higher learning, it can take several weeks for that degree to be posted to the transcript. Therefore, most state licensing boards will accept an official letter from the acadmic department confirming the completion of all degree requirements, but not Georgia! Does the GA policy make sense? No, not for an in-demand profession such as Speech-Language Pathology.

24 August, 2007  

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