Board Overseeing Texas Doctors in Recovery Revisits Drug Testing It Has Discussed Since 2023

The board that oversees the state program monitoring Texas doctors with addiction and mental health conditions meets Sept. 25 to take up drug and alcohol testing — an item that has appeared on every posted agenda since at least July 2023 and has never produced a recorded decision.

The Texas Physician Health Program is confidential and nondisciplinary by statute. Licensees refer themselves, or are referred by hospitals, colleagues or the Texas Medical Board, and sign a monitoring agreement that can require evaluations, treatment and random drug screening. Under the program’s own policy, the medical board cannot see a complying participant’s file and learns only that the person is enrolled. The law requires a report if the medical director or the board finds a participant poses a continuing threat to the public welfare. Under a 2025 law the medical board can also order participation as a condition of keeping a license. Participants pay their own costs.

The testing item has ridden the agenda unchanged for years. Minutes record the medical director giving an update in July, September and November 2023, nothing in March 2024, and then, in May 2024, a presentation from a company called Recovery Trek on a drug and alcohol testing product named Proof. It has appeared on ten notices since, with no posted outcome. The Dispatch found no public document naming the program’s current testing vendor or what a screen costs a participant.

Checking that is hard, because the board has published no minutes since its May 31, 2024 meeting — eleven meetings ago. A seat has been printed vacant on every notice since November 2025, after the board’s licensed clinical social worker left. Board rule reserves one of the 11 seats for a mental health professional licensed in Texas, though four sitting members are psychiatrists. The roster also runs one medical doctor short and one osteopathic physician over what that same rule prescribes.

An outside look is coming. State law requires an internal audit of the program every three years, covering how referrals are taken in, how participants are monitored, how confidentiality is handled and how cases are closed. The last was in 2022. The Texas Medical Board directed that the one scheduled for 2025 be put off to the year that ended Aug. 31, giving no reason on the record, and no report on it has been published yet. The Sept. 25 agenda carries budget and legal reports, which is where it would surface.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Brian “Dean” McDaniel — president; Victoria; bariatric surgeon.
• Jeffrey Butts — Boerne; addiction medicine physician.
• Ron Cook — Lubbock; family medicine chair, Texas Tech; Lubbock health authority.
• Mark Kunik — Houston; geriatric psychiatrist, Baylor College of Medicine.
• Helaine Lane — Houston; public member.
• Katherine McQueen — Houston; addiction medicine physician; former program medical director.
• Sejal Mehta — Plano; psychiatrist; chairs the state medical association’s wellness committee.
• Vicki Waters — Houston; physician assistant; Baylor College of Medicine faculty.
• Michael Weaver — Houston; addiction psychiatry professor, UTHealth Houston.
• Susan Wynne — San Antonio; child and adult psychiatrist.
• One seat vacant since November 2025.

Roster as printed on the program’s July 24, 2026 meeting notice, which heads the list “Board Members 10/11,” cross-checked against the program’s biography page and medical board minutes. Members are appointed by the medical board’s president, so no governor’s appointment releases exist for these seats and no source publishes term dates — seven of the ten were already serving in 2020, but the rule permits reappointment, so length of service does not imply an expired term. Cities for Cook, Kunik, McQueen, Waters and Weaver, and the public-member label for Lane, are inferred from posted biographies rather than stated on any notice. The roster as printed also does not match the credential mix the rule prescribes, which requires six medical doctors and two osteopathic physicians; the current list runs five and three. That is a separate gap from the vacancy — filling the vacant seat would not close it. The rule took effect in January 2025, after most members were seated, and its text could only be retrieved from a law-school mirror rather than the state’s own rule portal, which has been retired. The program’s materials are visibly stale: Katherine McQueen’s biography still says in the present tense that she “is honored to join” the program “as the Medical Director,” four years after she left that post, and the frequently-asked-questions page cites the wrong chapter of state rules. Executive medical director: Emily J. Doyle, in the role since July 2022. The Sept. 25 notice carries no roster and the program has not posted its own agenda for the meeting. Meeting contact: Alicia Freeman, 512-971-7205.