• Newsroom

• About DOH

• Programs & Services

• DOH Web (A-Z)

• Public Health Week 2008 Home Page

• Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

• Tobacco Prevention

• Drinking Water

• Health Professions Quality Assurance

• The Health of Washington State

• 2004
• 2005
• 2006

• 2007

Public Health Week 2008
Programs Profile

Health care providers are among the most trusted of all professions. The Department of Health works hard to make sure they deserve the public’s trust.

The department licenses more than 320,000 health providers, about one in every 20 people in the state. It also licenses and inspects many health facilities. This effort to protect patients covers nearly 70 separate health professions. This includes doctors, nurses, dentists and many others. The public plays a major role in this oversight. The department examines every one of the 7,000 complaints it receives each year and aggressively investigates more than 4,000 of them.

During the past two years, the department:

• Issued about 80,000 new licenses and renewed about 500,000.

• More than doubled the number of summary actions to stop practice by incompetent and unethical providers.

• Handled more than 14,000 complaints.

The increase in licensed professions and public scrutiny has magnified the department’s work. In just the past 10 years, the number of complaints increased by 63 percent. Disciplinary actions increased by 121 percent. During this period, the number of license holders rose by 47 percent.

Resources:

• Find out if your health provider has been disciplined or holds a current license.

• Find out how to file a complaint against a health provider or facility.

• To file a complaint against a health provider or facility.

• To contact the department by telephone, call the complaint hotline at 1-800-633-6828 or the customer service center at 360-236-4700.