A new inspection program examining Georgia’s med spas, IV clinics and other healthcare businesses has found numerous problems that threaten public safety.
The unannounced checks by the Georgia Composite Medical Board discovered medical services being provided by unlicensed workers, medications being unlawfully compounded, healthcare workers practicing outside of their scope of training and operators failing to track adverse events, such as bad reactions to treatments. What’s more, some clinics don’t have physician oversight and aren’t conducting necessary medical exams before administering treatments.
The inspections also identified chiropractors offering popular weight loss and testosterone treatments even though Georgia doesn’t allow chiropractors to prescribe medications or administer injections.
In response to its inspectors’ findings, the medical board plans to put the state’s thriving med spa and wellness industry on notice about the requirements of Georgia law, the board’s executive director, Jason Jones, told lawmakers last week when testifying before the Legislature’s House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Community Health and Healthcare Oversight.
The medical board also plans to seek legislation that could place new legal limits and registration requirements on med spas and IV treatment facilities, Jones told the lawmakers.
The board’s actions come in the wake of the AJC’s Risky Medicine investigation, which found that Georgia has become a safe harbor for clinics that offer health treatments that run counter to accepted science, mainstream medicine and federal guidelines. The AJC’s investigation found that some of the staff treating patients operated outside their training, without proper oversight or even without any type of healthcare license.
The industry has thrived, the AJC found, because of lax oversight by a state medical board that has been dramatically underfunded for years and is one of the weakest in the nation when it comes to imposing serious disciplinary actions against physicians.
Jones said the board’s new inspections division was established to bring oversight to issues highlighted in the AJC’s series.
“The AJC’s ‘Risky Medicine’ series has been a valuable resource in shining a light on practices within Georgia’s med spa, wellness, and alternative medicine practice industry that put patients at risk,” Jones said in an email to the AJC. “Investigative reporting like this, combined with information from licensees and the public, helps inform where the Board directs its oversight and compliance resources.”
Jones said anyone with concerns about a med spa, wellness clinic or provider practicing outside their scope should file a complaint with the board. “Every complaint helps us protect the next patient,” Jones said.
While Jones wants to hear from the public, he also told members of the study committee last week that the board can’t implement the patient protections Georgians need because of dramatic understaffing at the agency.
Credit: Georgia General Assembly
Credit: Georgia General Assembly
As it is, the board can’t keep up with its responsibilities, he told the panel. In the last fiscal year, the board opened about 450 investigations. But Jones said they have a backlog of 832 cases and inspections awaiting assignment for investigation. The board’s investigators, who are certified as law enforcement officers, handle the investigations, which involve malpractice, improper prescribing, sex abuse or other serious allegations.
Meanwhile, the board also has a backlog of 329 compliance cases, which are somewhat less serious than the investigative cases or don’t require law enforcement investigators to handle.
Jones warned that backlogs are likely to grow because complaints are growing as the board does more outreach, while the number of licensees is increasing, too.
The board needs to add at least 25 new positions to its staff — a jump of about 50% — to fulfill its mission of protecting the public through its role of licensing and disciplining doctors, physician assistants and other types of healthcare providers, Jones said in his presentation.
Among the critical staffing needs, the board is dramatically underfunded when it comes to legal staffing, with just one attorney and one paralegal to handle board orders, hearings, administrative hearings, open records, rulemaking and legislative drafting. Jones said there are 45 cases pending at the attorney general’s office in need of prosecutorial support, formal charges or hearing preparation that the board’s single attorney must coordinate.
The board is also dramatically understaffed when it comes to handling routine activities, including the hundreds of calls, emails and requests that come in daily. To keep up with the volume, the board needs more than double its current staff to handle those tasks, Jones said.
Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, who heard Jones’ presentation as a member of the study committee, told the AJC in an interview that he supports the request to increase the board’s staff.
Hawkins said the board is charged with protecting the public, and he’s concerned about any medical clinics that are taking advantage of patients.
“People put a lot of trust in their provider, and their provider should be worthy of that trust,” said Hawkins, a retired dentist who is the chairman of the House Health Committee and also serves on the House Appropriations Committee and its health subcommittee.
Jones couldn’t tell the AJC the names of specific clinics where inspectors found problems because of confidentiality requirements of the board’s investigations. But he said inspectors have checked med spas and IV therapy businesses around the state in both rural areas and major cities.
While they have uncovered numerous problems, Jones said they have also found legitimate businesses with “quality patient standards with proper medical oversight.”
Jones told the AJC the risks posed by the violations inspectors found at med spas and IV clinics can be serious.
He said unlawful compounding means patients may be receiving medications that weren’t prepared under sterile conditions or accurate dosing protocols, raising the risk of contamination, incorrect potency or dangerous drug interactions.
He said that when estheticians or medical assistants perform procedures reserved for licensed physicians or nurses, that increases the chances of botched injections, misjudged dosages and delayed recognition of complications. The failure to have proper physician oversight for weight loss drugs and hormones can present dangers when necessary information from a health history or blood work isn’t collected and evaluated.
Jones advised consumers to verify the credentials of anyone giving them treatments, find out who the supervising physician is, ask where medications come from and report any concerns.
Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, a retired orthopedic surgeon and vice chair of the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, told the AJC she’s concerned about a “Wild West” atmosphere in Georgia when it comes to a growth in clinics offering questionable healthcare treatments.
Kirkpatrick said lawmakers should take action to give the medical board the resources it needs.
“There are two parts to it,” Kirkpatrick said. “One is legislative, and one is financial. We’ve got to be sure that they have the authority to police whatever they need to police.”
She said legislation may be needed, along with more staff for the board, to help rein in bad actors.
“They have got to have some more resources in order to not only catch up but stay ahead of some of the stuff that’s happening out in the world,” she said.
Both Kirkpatrick and Hawkins said Jones, who was hired as the medical board’s executive director in 2024, has made great strides and is an effective leader who could make a difference with a full staff.
The board collects licensing fees to pay for its operations. But the problem with the board’s underfunding lies in the General Assembly’s practice of siphoning off half — or more — of the licensing money for the state’s general fund instead of returning it to the agency.
A blistering state audit released in 2020 strongly criticized lawmakers for keeping money collected by the board and urged the General Assembly to get in line with national standards and allow the board to use all the money it collects in fees to hire the additional staff it needs to protect the public.
Lawmakers have never acted on that recommendation.
Before the new med spa and IV clinic inspections, the AJC found that clinics offering unproven and even disproven therapies across the state faced almost no scrutiny.
Kirkpatrick, the state senator and retired surgeon, said Georgians should be skeptical of clinics offering care that isn’t scientifically proven.
“New technology lends itself to new cottage industries of people who are out there making money on the unsuspecting public, and it’s not only financially problematic, but it’s dangerous and it can hurt patients,” she said.
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