HARRY HUGHES, Governor

753

that governs another health occupation. The organizational
pattern used in this article closely follows that of the
health occupation licensing statute most recently enacted by
the General Assembly. See Ch. 715, Acts of 1979.

Some acts fall within the scope of the practice of more
than one health occupation. This overlap is recognized
expressly in the statutes that govern some health
occupations. See, e.g., present Art. 43, § 479 regarding
osteopathy, which states, "nothing contained in this
subtitle shall be construed {as} affecting the so-called
practice of medicine" and present Art. 43, § 504, which
grants the State Board of Chiropractic Examiners the right
to issue a license with the right to practice physical
therapy to certain qualified applicants. Some of the
present subtitles governing health occupations do not
include these express exemptions, and many of the express
exemptions that do appear are obsolete, e.g., they do not
recognize health occupations that have developed since the
exemptions were enacted. The Commission interprets the
legislative intent behind the present law to be to grant
each licensee the right to practice the health occupation
for which the license is issued even though a person
licensed to practice another health occupation may be
authorized to perform some of the same acts. To recognize
this intent expressly, except where the present law provides
to the contrary, the Commission has added to each title of
this article, other than Title 1, the affirmative statement
that the "title does not limit the right of an individual to
practice a health occupation that the individual is
authorized to practice under this article".

Throughout this article, the terms "license" and
"licensed" are used to denote an authorization to practice a
particular health occupation that a person who is not
licensed in that health occupation may not practice. Also
throughout this article, the terms "certification" and
"certified" are used to indicate an official recognition of
an individual as a qualified practitioner and an
accompanying grant of the exclusive privilege or right to
make certain representations. Thus, a certified individual
may make certain representations that an uncertified person
may not make, but the certified individual is not authorized
to provide any service that an uncertified person may not
provide. In a few places in this article, the term "permit"
is used to denote the authorization to perform certain
limited acts that are related to a particular health
occupation and that a person without a permit may not
perform. None of these terms have any legal significance in
themselves, and the Commission easily could have decided to
use any of them in a different sense or to use different
terms. The real significance lies in the substantive
provisions in which these terms appear. However, the
Commission believes that, if the terms consistently are used
as indicated, the substantive provisions become more easily
understandable.