| OHLA: Laying the Foundation for Regulatory Success |
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| Message from the OHLA Director |
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OHLA Director Susan K. Wilson
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The Oregon Health Licensing Agency (OHLA) is laying the foundation to provide both consumers and regulated professionals with the best regulatory services, resources and performance possible.
The goal: to protect the health and safety of consumers while providing our licensees with streamlined services – services that make working with the agency faster, easier and cheaper.
Through our efforts, we want to ensure that all Oregon consumers are able to access competent and qualified professionals. We also want to provide qualified professionals the opportunity to start working sooner and stay competent through continuing education and training.
Our goal is to provide maximum value – value that results in positive outcomes for both Oregon consumers and our approximately 70,000 license holders in 17 health and related professions.
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| Looking Ahead: OHLA Reviews, Reorganizes, Responds |
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OHLA is looking ahead and being proactive in reviewing all areas of the agency’s operation to determine how best to provide regulatory services today, tomorrow and into the future.
We are making a concerted effort to find new and creative ways to streamline the regulatory process, find efficiencies and eliminate unnecessary and redundant ways of doing business.
We are refocusing on OHLA’s strengths – its central agency structure, the diversity of our staff, the profession-specific expertise of our volunteer citizen boards and councils, and our many and various stakeholders – while identifying areas in which our delivery of service can be enhanced and improved.
A major result of this review is the agency’s current reorganization – a reorganization that positions OHLA to respond effectively to emerging regulatory developments into the next decade.
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| A Vision for Today and the Future: A New Kind of Regulatory Approach |
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Since OHLA was established in 1999, the agency has offered a different approach to regulation that is unique in Oregon.
Our agency’s structure allows us to move smoothly and effectively through change – change that is a constant in any endeavor and in life.
Our current reorganization does just that – it refines and reconfigures the central agency model to maximize the benefits of economies of scale, regulatory consistency among multiple professions, and accountability to Oregon consumers and our licensees.
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| OHLA Actively Pursues Excellence by Drawing on Expertise |
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We are enlisting the expertise of OHLA staff, other state agencies such as the Department of Administrative Services, our stakeholders, business partners and license holders to elicit ideas to help us move forward toward agency excellence.
Also, thanks to the unique nature of OHLA’s central agency regulatory model, we have the expertise and creative ideas of the 57 members who serve on our nine different volunteer citizen boards and councils representing OHLA’s regulated professions.
As they provide expertise and knowledge specific to the various health and related professions they represent, they also offer OHLA a tremendous synergy and capability in identifying how we can improve our agency’s performance.
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| Continuing a Tradition of Excellence: OHLA Accomplishments |
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The reorganization provides us with new opportunities to add to OHLA’s track record of progressive regulatory initiatives. Here are just a few of the new and exciting ways we will be providing regulatory value in 2008 and beyond by:
- Posting on our Web site at www.oregon.gov/OHLA all disciplinary final orders against license holders found to be in violation of state requirements to assist consumers in making more informed choices in choosing providers.
- Requiring training and continuing education for license holders to assure ongoing competency to protect consumers.
- Establishing new services to streamline the licensing process, from offering applicants and licensees an “express line” to staying open during the noon hour and expanding the days and times applicants can sit for qualifying examinations.
- Expanding our online offerings at www.oregon.gov/OHLA to provide both consumers and license holders with 24/7 resources that augment the customer service efforts of OHLA staff.
OHLA is also developing a licensing fee structure meant to provide an equitable and effective means to carry out our consumer protection mission. We want to ensure that we have the resources available to protect Oregon consumers while establishing licensing fees that are appropriate for each regulated profession.
We look forward to providing the very best licensing and regulatory services, continually improving our performance, and building on our past and present successes.
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