Thursday, August 24, 2006

Maryland Professional License Information

Perhaps you'r interested in hiring a new electrician to work on your house. Or perhaps you're interested in hiring an accountant to work on your taxes. Wouldn't you first want to check that the person is licensed in Maryland? For certain professions, you can check that relatively simply by checking the Department of Labor Licensing & Regulation's page on Professional Licensing. On this page, simply select the type of profession and then search by either name or location. To check whether an attorney is licensed to practice in Maryland see the website for the Client Protection Fund of the Bar of Maryland. The site has a simple name search. If the attorney is in the database they are licensed in MD. For doctors, search the Practitioner Profile System from the Maryland Board of Physicians website. In addition to telling you whether a particular doctor is licensed in MD, the system also includes information about malpractice and/or disciplinary actions filed against the physician. For other regulated professions not covered by the above, the information does not seem to be available online. For example, audiologist, hearing aid dispensers, and speech pathologists require licensure in Maryland, but there is no searchable database online. Instead, the Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene website provides a number to call to check whether someone from these professions is licensed. The same seems to be true for psychologists, dentists and other professions not listed above. If anyone knows anything further on this, as usual, please feel free to post a comment.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals

The Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals, an executive branch agency, has jurisdiction over cases involving disputes between the state and contractors doing business with the state. This is a bare bones site, but it does provide access to the Board's most important resource: its opinions. The opinions on the site go back to '99. You can either flip through the pages or enter the party name in the Google box hosted on the site. On a related note, you may also want to check out the Board of Public Works list of people and organizations debarred from doing business with the state. For more info about the Board of Contract Appeals see this site.