ATLANTA — It's been several months since the Georgia Secretary of State's Office launched a new online system for license registration and renewals, which is used by hundreds of thousands of professionals statewide to continue working.
Physical therapists (PT) are just one group of many required to renew their licenses to continue working in the state of Georgia. Because of their recent December renewal deadline, they were among one of the first groups of professionals to be impacted by the state's new online system called GOALS.
Dhara Shah, who is the president of the Georgia Physical Therapy Association, said she's been inundated with calls and emails from PTs unable to renew or get a license because of bugs with the GOALS system that was launched in November.
"They’ve got bills to pay and a lot of them have families," Shah explained.
Channelle Garcia, a physical therapist who moved from New York to Georgia last year, said she's been unable to work as a PT since November.
"I've been calling and calling basically every single day since maybe November. And most of the time, it's message of we're experiencing high volumes, please call back later," Garcia said.
Both Garcia and Shah expressed their frustration with how the process is affecting new professionals in the field.
“You want them to be excited to join the profession, and right now, it has been further from that than we could ever have imagined," Shah said.
11Alive first reported on these issues back in November. Shortly after that, the Georgia Secretary of State's Office pushed the renewal deadline back to Jan. 31 for physical therapists.
On Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shared that they don't have any plans for another extension, adding that they are working around the clock to address all of the remaining pending applications.
“We’re working hard on it and we’re back from the holidays. Our goal is to be done at the end of the month," said Raffensperger.
Raffensperger also shared that they were working with the governor to get more funding to hire additional staffing to assist with processing license renewals and registrations.