Texas Respiratory Therapists Are Licensed by a Board Whose Rules Need Another Board’s Approval

The board that certifies every respiratory therapist in Texas meets Sept. 17 to take up two sets of changes to its own rulebook. Nothing it adopts takes effect until a different board signs off.

The Texas Board of Respiratory Care is, by statute, an advisory board to the Texas Medical Board. In practice it runs a profession. Its nine members, named by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, approve applications, write the certification rules and discipline the people who hold the certificates. The limit comes at the end: every rule the board adopts goes to the Medical Board, which approves or rejects it by majority vote and sends back anything it rejects.

The Sept. 17 agenda carries both halves of that process at once — one item to propose changes to the rules governing respiratory care practitioners, another to adopt rules that have already been through comment. The notice names the chapter and stops there: no sections, no summary, no indication of who would be affected. The Medical Board’s rule-changes page lists one pending proposal, on ketamine therapy, and nothing on respiratory care, so the text does not appear to be public yet. The chapter was rewritten from the ground up in January 2025.

Most of the 29-item agenda is enforcement, and almost none of it is visible from the notice. Items are listed as categories — agreed orders, remedial plans, cease-and-desist agreements, default determinations, cases staff recommends dismissing — with no names and no case numbers. None of those categories is a finding of wrongdoing: an agreed order is a settlement, and a remedial plan is non-disciplinary by law. At the board’s June 2025 meeting, which ran 71 minutes, more than half the numbered items had nothing under them, dismissals were voted in blocks by the member assigned to review them, and four named practitioners had orders approved. The board also takes up referrals to the state’s physician health program, which it is allowed to use as its peer-assistance route for practitioners with substance-use or health problems.

The board is required to meet only three times a year, so Sept. 17 is likely its last sitting of 2026. If it adopts a rule, the next move belongs to the Medical Board.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Sam G. Marshall — presiding officer; Round Rock; chairs Texas State University’s respiratory care department.
• Latana T. Jackson — treasurer; Cedar Hill; cardiopulmonary director, Baylor Scott & White Irving.
• Kandace D. Pool — secretary; San Angelo; Realtors association executive; public member.
• Timothy R. Chappell, M.D. — Plano; pulmonary and critical care physician.
• Hammad Nasir Qureshi, M.D. — Tomball; pulmonary and critical care physician.
• Nathan A. Rodrigues — Round Rock; assistant professor of respiratory care, Texas State University.
• Matthew Goldwater — Georgetown; therapist member; no employer listed by the board.
• Samuel L. Brown Jr. — Marshall; IT manager and network administrator; public member.
• Sonia K. Sanderson — Beaumont; paralegal, Exxon Mobil law department; public member.

Roster and job descriptions taken from the board’s own members page, checked September 15, which lists all nine and marks the officers; the board’s June 26, 2025 minutes record Jackson as treasurer and Pool as secretary. Appointment dates come from the governor’s releases of March 12, 2024 and September 12, 2025; the later one added Matthew Goldwater and reappointed Samuel Brown and Hammad Qureshi to terms ending February 1, 2031. The seat Goldwater fills is the one Debra Patrick left — that is an inference from the June 2025 minutes, which record a resolution thanking her, not something the release says. The board publishes no term expiration dates, and no employer is listed for Goldwater. Brint Carlton is executive director of the Medical Board and Scott Freshour is general counsel. Meeting contact: Alicia Freeman, (512) 971-7205.