WAC 246-562-010   Definitions.  The following definitions apply in the interpretation and implementation of these rules.

     (1) "Applicant" means a health care facility that seeks to employ a physician and is requesting state sponsorship or concurrence of a visa waiver.

     (2) "Department" means the department of health.

     (3) "Board eligible" means having satisfied the requirements necessary to sit for board examinations.

     (4) "Employment contract" means a legally binding agreement between the applicant and the physician named in the visa waiver application which contains all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, the salary, benefits, length of employment and any other consideration owing under the agreement.

     (5) "Full time" means a minimum forty hours of medical practice per week, not including call coverage, consisting of at least thirty-two hours seeing patients on an ambulatory or in-patient basis and may include up to eight hours administrative work for at least forty-eight weeks per year.

     (6) "Health care facility" means an entity with an active Washington state business license doing business or proposing to do business in the practice location where the physician would be employed, whose stated purposes include the delivery of medical care.

     (7) "Health professional shortage area" (HPSA) means an area federally designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians or mental health care.

     (8) "Hospitalist" means a physician, usually an internist, who specializes in the care of hospitalized patients.

     (9) "Low income" means that a family's total household income is less than two hundred percent of the federal poverty level as defined by the U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines published annually.

     (10) "Medically underserved area" (MUA) means a federally designated area based on whether the area exceeds a score for an Index of Medical Underservice, a value based on infant mortality, poverty rates, percentage of elderly and primary care physicians to population ratios.

     (11) "Physician" means the foreign physician, named in the visa waiver application, who requires a waiver to remain in the United States to practice medicine.

     (12) "Primary care physician" means a physician board certified or board eligible in family practice, general internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, geriatric medicine or psychiatry. Physicians who have completed any subspecialty or fellowship training, excluding OB training, are not considered primary care physicians for the purpose of this chapter.

     (13) "Sliding fee discount schedule" means a written delineation documenting the value of charge discounts granted to patients based upon financial hardship.

     (14) "Specialist" means a physician board certified or board eligible in a specialty other than family practice, general internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, geriatric medicine or psychiatry (the current definition of "primary care" for the waiver program).

     (15) "Sponsorship" means a request by the department on behalf of a health care facility to federal immigration authorities to grant a visa waiver for the purpose of recruiting and retaining physicians.

     (16) "Visa waiver" means a federal action that waives the requirement for a foreign physician, in the United States on a J-1 visa, to return to his/her home country for a two-year period following medical residency training.

     (17) "Vacancy" means a full-time physician practice opportunity that is based on a planned retirement, a loss of an existing physician, or an expansion of physician services in the service area.



[Statutory Authority: Chapter 70.185 RCW and Public Law 108-441. 06-07-035, § 246-562-010, filed 3/8/06, effective 4/8/06. Statutory Authority: Chapter 70.185 RCW. 03-19-054, § 246-562-010, filed 9/11/03, effective 10/12/03; 00-15-082, § 246-562-010, filed 7/19/00, effective 8/19/00; 98-20-067, § 246-562-010, filed 10/2/98, effective 11/2/98.]