Tennessee Administrative Expungement for Healthcare Licensees
For a healthcare professional who completed a board-required treatment program years ago, rebuilt a practice, and has not had a single issue since, the public license profile can still tell a story that stopped being true a long time ago. The old disciplinary order sits there, visible to anyone who looks, and it keeps surfacing in the quiet background work that shapes a career long after the underlying matter was resolved.
That visibility carries real weight. Credentialing companies pull the public profile before advancing an enrollment, payors flag adverse history for additional review that can push timelines out by months, and the three-letter agencies tend to look more closely at a applicants whose record shows prior discipline. Employers and partners see the order during a routine search and quietly move on to the next name. For someone who did the work to recover, it can feel like a consequence with no end date, even though the matter itself closed years earlier.
What Tennessee Law Now Allows
Tennessee changed that in 2025. Chapter 100 of the Public Acts of 2025, effective July 1, 2025, amended the State’s Health Care Consumer Right-to-Know Act of 1998 to give certain licensed healthcare providers a formal way to petition their licensing board to remove certain older substance-use-related disciplinary information from the public-facing license verification website. A provider becomes eligible five years after successfully completing a board-approved peer assistance or treatment program, as documented in the adverse action proceeding. The pathway reaches across Tennessee’s health-related licensing boards, from pharmacists and to physicians, advance practice nurses, dentists, podiatrists, and others, most of the licensees who qualify have no idea it exists.
It is worth being precise about what the petition does. It clears the disciplinary information from the public-facing profile that patients, employers, and payors rely on. The board keeps its underlying records and authority intact. The legislature designed it as a balance, recognizing both the public’s interest in transparency and the reality that years of sustained recovery deserve to count for something.
The First Petition Granted Under the Law
RxLaw Group represented Dr. Kevin Hartman, a Nashville pharmacist who has built and operates pharmacies across several states, in the first petition granted under the new law. Dr. Hartman completed all of the terms of his order, over a decade ago, yet the enforcement action followed him ever since. He described the bind it created for licensees in his position:
“If I, who had a record, and you, who didn’t have a record, went to get a job, nine times out of ten you would get a callback and I would not, because of what was on the record.”
On April 1, 2026, the Tennessee Board of Pharmacy voted unanimously to remove those prior actions from Dr. Hartman’s public profile. Matt Gibbs, who handled the petition, had told Dr. Hartman during their conversation that, to the best of his knowledge, “you’re the first person in the state of Tennessee that utilized administrative expungement.” For Dr. Hartman, the result came down to one thing:
“My record is now clean, and that’s a great feeling, because that’s something that doesn’t have to follow me all of my life.”
Why the Right Counsel Matters
A result like that reflects preparation more than luck. Matt Gibbs puts his background plainly:
“I spent more than nine years inside Tennessee’s healthcare regulatory system. I know how enforcement decisions get made because I used to make them.”
That background shapes how Matt builds a petition. He understands how these hearings run, how board members weigh a request, and how to put the case for recovery in front of the people making the decision. Dr. Hartman saw the difference it made:
“It’s always good to have people with you that the regulatory board trusts and will listen to. You’ve done this before, and that is a much better recipe for success than trying on my own.”
This is a newer provision, and the boards are still developing how they apply it, so no outcome is ever guaranteed. What a licensee can count on is not walking into that setting alone.
What to Do Now
If your public profile still carries an order that no longer reflects where you are today, a single conversation is enough to learn whether the law reaches your situation.
RxLaw Group helps healthcare licensees across Tennessee petition for administrative expungement. Schedule a free call with Matt Gibbs to find out whether you qualify.