Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

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Board paralyzed by Botox

Where’s the emergency in the Board of Medical Examiners’ emergency regulation to crack down on unlicensed medical assistants?

Executive Director Louis Ling admitted last week on Face to Face that he’s known for years that doctors are allowing unlicensed workers to illegally administer any number of dangerous drugs and controlled substances, including Botox.

The board is expected to vote Friday to selectively enforce those laws against medical assistants who administer cosmetic injections but not against medical assistants who inject vaccinations and other drugs. The governor’s office and the board say they fear blanket enforcement of the law would land Nevadans in long lines waiting for flu shots.

So why are medical assistants qualified to administer a flu shot, which could have serious side effects if given at the wrong time or to the wrong person, but not qualified to administer Botox, which has temporary effects and could leave a patient with a droopy eye for a few weeks? Even plastic surgeons admit that some medical assistants who inject Botox all day are better at it than doctors who may spend much of their time in plastic surgery.

The so-called emergency regulation will do nothing about the real emergency – the fact that the medical board, which now advocates that no one be punished for breaking the law, forwarded a complaint to the Attorney General that resulted in the arrest of a medical assistant for injecting Botox, a crime committed daily by scores of other medical assistants throughout the state, including an employee of a medical board member.

The arrest, the emergency regulation and Ling’s comments on Face to Face give credence to a pervasive belief in the industry that the doctor-dominated medical board is out to protect its own at the expense of competing medical spas, which are often staffed by the unlicensed assistants.

The state’s emergency regulation stands to put a number of medical assistants out of work and medical spas out of business when unemployment is already at 13 percent. Rather than selectively enforce an existing law, why not establish minimum standards and regulate medical assistants? As plastic surgeon Julio Garcia noted recently, even the person who cuts your hair needs a license. Why not demand the same from the person injecting Botox between your eyes or a vaccine into your child or parent?

I’ve attached a link to the board’s emergency regulation.

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