Update on H. 2451/S. 1257
Posted on 7/16/2018 in State Legislative News
Thank you to all of our members who have supported our legislative efforts and remained engaged in this legislative session.
To update you on where we stand, the Senate and House versions of our bill (H. 2451/ S. 1257) remain before the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.
We continue to work behind the scenes to find a political solution to advance Full Practice Authority for NPs in Massachusetts, whether it is through our stand-alone bills or another vehicle that may be moving.
As the formal session winds down over the next 2 weeks, we are monitoring developments related to a number of health care related bills that may be helpful, including the House and Senate Health Care Bills which are now in conference committee pending review by a small group of legislators from each chamber with the goal of releasing a single compromise bill.
As you may recall, the Senate approved their health care bill (S. 2211) last November. This bill included scope of practice language with a provision for 2 years of supervision prior to independent NP prescriptive practice. The corresponding House bill (H. 4639) passed approximately 3 weeks ago. This bill did not include language for removal of supervision but did include the creation of a new process (moving forward) for review of ALL scope of practice bills by the Health Policy Commission and CHIA (Center for Health Information and Analysis). While this is not ideal in that it will slow the process for advancing scope of practice legislation, it will remove some of the politics around these bills and be harder to oppose legislation that is deemed to be sound public policy.
Our lobbying team is still actively engaged with key legislators and are pursuing all options to advance our language and will remain committed to this until the formal session ends on July 31st.
We have posted a new email campaign on our website and ask that you contact your legislators to reiterate that health care reform should be addressed before the Legislature breaks for the summer and that a path to Full Practice Authority for Nurse Practitioners should be included. Legislators will be dealing with many competing issues over the next 2 weeks and it will be important that they hear from you.
We expect more developments in the weeks ahead and will let you know when your action is next needed.