The Texas Medical Board apologized to The Dallas Express during a dispute over documents connected to Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s audit.
“In short, The Dallas Express payment was received, but the Texas Medical Board staff made a mistake in the way the payment was coded. We apologize for this error,” Board Member Brint Carlton said in an email to DX.
Carlton’s statement was predicated on a letter DX received from the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), informing the outlet that OAG would not pursue a complaint DX filed against the Texas Medical Board (TMB) because a check DX had written to the Board had bounced.
However, DX had not written a hot check, and the outlet’s financial records indicated that the Board had been in possession of DX‘s money for months.
“As an explanation, each deposit received by the Board is manually coded by Finance staff so that it goes into the correct account. In this instance, the incorrect coding caused the funds to deposit into a different TMB account. Finance staff then accidentally created an entry for insufficient funds when the funds did not appear in the expected account.
“The Open Records Request team received an update from the Finance staff on the payment and was incorrectly informed that the Comptroller was unable to process the payment due to insufficient funds. This incorrect information was passed to the OAG in our January 23, 2025, Withdrawal Letter,” Carlton said.
“To be clear, the Comptroller never indicated there were insufficient funds. This was a mistake on the part of Board staff,” Carlton clarified.
He went on to add that Board staff had originally requested approval from OAG to withhold the requested documents due to Dr. Bowden’s pending case, but since the Administrative Court recently partially ruled against her, there was no longer a need to withhold the documents.
“As a showing of good faith, the Board will also process a refund of your $142.50 paid in January despite the staff time taken to search our records for any responsive materials,” Carlton said. “Finally, Finance and Open Records Request staff have discussed corrective measures to ensure this type of error does not happen in the future.”
The battle to obtain these documents began in the late fall.
“During my deposition on 10/8/24, the lawyer for TMB asked me if I was up to date on my CME (continuing medical education) hours. I said I was, as far as I knew. Nine days later, on 10/17/24, I received an audit notice from TMB for my CME. I’ve never been audited before, and it’s hard for me to believe this happened randomly,” Dr. Mary Talley Bowden told The Dallas Express in mid-October 2024.
The Board president told DX at the time that the audit was random. DX attempted to verify this claim by requesting communications between Board officials and the audit manager around the time of the audit.
DX filed the request in mid-December and paid TMB the necessary fees later that month.
More than a month later, after DX still had not received the documents, DX reported the Board to the Office of the Attorney General for what the outlet believed was non-compliance with the Texas Public Information Act. Then, for two months, there were no updates.
The silence was broken on March 25 when DX received the OAG letter claiming DX‘s complaint had been withdrawn by “operation of law” because “the board states it was unable to process the payment received on January 6, 2025, due to insufficient funds.”
DX approached TMB on March 27 requesting documentation of the supposed insufficient funds or, if such documentation did not exist, an explanation for why such a statement had been made to OAG during a dispute over the audit documents. That is when Carlton issued his aforementioned statement.
Along with the apology, TMB has also given DX a cache of documents that the outlet is currently reviewing. The outlet will provide an update once the staff has reviewed these documents and determined their context.
TMB’s case against Bowden has been a point of national contention since it was launched in 2023. Bowden became a national figure in 2021 when she publicly opposed COVID mandates at Houston Methodist Hospital, where she had admittance privileges but was not an employee and where she had attempted to treat a COVID-infected Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy with ivermectin.
The Board’s case against her concerned how she and the hospital came to separate from each other and how she attempted medical treatment of the deputy. The state administrative court ruled against her on the parts of the case concerning the deputy. It remains unclear if she will appeal.