(a) For each health profession, the Department shall designate a professional organization which meets the requirements indicated below and shall delegate to each one of them the power to draft all the regulations applicable to their respective professions, as to the quality of the service rendered by the health professionals, including the structures that shall be created for the evaluation of the professional practice. The medical and hospital services offered to beneficiary patients of the federal programs covered by Federal Law 92-608 shall be evaluated by the organization designated by virtue of said law.
(b) To be designated pursuant to the provisions in the preceding subsection (a), the professional organization shall be legally constituted either as a college or as a nonprofit association and recorded as such in the Department of State of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and shall represent the largest number of members of the regular licensed professionals to practice said profession.
(c) Any professional organization which meets the requirements prescribed in subsection (b) of this section above may request the Department to designate it to carry out the work indicated. When two (2) or more organizations request to be designated for the purposes mentioned for the same profession, the Department shall designate the one that meets the requirements of the foregoing subsection (b) of this section. Said organizations shall be known as professional regulation and evaluation organizations exclusively for the purposes of this chapter.
(d) Where there is no professional organization which meets the requirements mentioned in subsection (b) of this section, or if one exists but does not accept the task of drafting the regulations applicable to a health profession in particular, or if after having been designated fails to fulfill its mission, the Department may delegate the power of drafting said regulations to any organization, group or committee constituted by members of said profession or, in default thereof, prepare the regulations itself.
History —June 23, 1976, No. 11, p. 672, § 19, renumbered as § 11 on June 29, 1977, No. 124, p. 338, § 23.