The state of South Dakota Health Professionals Assistance Program (HPAP) provides a non-disciplinary option for participating licensing Boards to deal with impaired regulated health professionals who recognize their illness of Chemical Dependency and need for continuing care and/or practice limitations. The program is confidential and professionally staffed to monitor treatment and continuing care of regulated health professionals who may be unable to practice with reasonable skill and safety if their illness is not appropriately managed.
The South Dakota Health Professionals Assistance Program is dedicated to enhancing public safety and support for regulated health professionals by facilitating early intervention, treatment, and safe return to practice of health professionals whose functioning is impaired by the use of alcohol and/or other drugs.
The Health Professionals Assistance Program acknowledges a primary concern for public safety. The program attempts to ensure public safety by providing voluntary, confidential alternatives for those chemically impaired health professionals who might otherwise go undetected.
The Health Professionals Assistance Program believes that the harmful involvement with alcohol or other drugs causes a negative impact on the physical, mental, social, vocational, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual areas of an individual's life. The Program recognizes that impaired health professionals are individuals who have dedicated their lives to helping others and are now in need of help, and acknowledges that facilitating the acquisition of this help must remain a primary goal of the Health Professionals Assistance Program. The Program follows a non-punitive approach, in which the program staff works in conjunction with, or as an alternative to, other sanctions which a health related Board might impose upon the individual health professional.
HPAP develops individualized Program Participation Agreements that monitor compliance of the chemically impaired professional to the prescribed program. Monitoring can be facilitated in the following ways:
A health professional may access the Assistance Program by self-referral, Board referral, or referral from another person or agency, such as an employer, coworker, or family member. Admission to HPAP is available to any individual who, at the time of application:
Participating Boards: Dentistry, Medical & Osteopathic Examiners, Nursing, Pharmacy
For additional information contact:
Maria Eining, HPAP Director
Tel: (605) 322-4048 Cell: (605) 310-2426 Fax: 322-4370
South Dakota Health Professionals Assistance Program
4400 West 69th Street #600
Sioux Falls, South Dakota 57108
Refer to SDCL 36-2A (Health Professionals Assistance Program)
