Significant Progress Made on Scope of Practice Bills August 12, 2013 Advocacy, CMA, News SB 492, SB 493, Scope of practice, SB 491 0 SFMS/CMA have made some success neutralizing the three "scope-of-practice" bills that were introduced in the 2013 legislative session. SB 491 (Hernandez) – Nurse Practitioners: This bill failed to move out of committee last week on a 6-3 vote, but was granted reconsideration and will be voted on again in tomorrow’s Assembly Business, Professions and Consumer Protection Committee. SB 491 would allow nurse practitioners to open practices without any oversight from a trained medical doctor and prescribe narcotics without supervision. While an important part of the health care delivery system, nurse practitioners simply do not have adequate training or education to be qualified to practice medicine without physician oversight. SFMS members are encouraged to call Assemblymember Phil Ting, and urge him to stand with us and vote NO on SB 491 tomorrow. SB 492 (Hernandez) – Optometrists: This bill would allow optometrists to examine, prevent, diagnose and treat any disease, condition or disorder of the visual system, the human eye and adjacent related structures. This has become a two-year bill and is withdrawn from consideration this year. SFMS/CMA believe this bill could place patients at risk of significant harm from having medical conditions diagnosed and treated by practitioners who lack the education, training, and experience to do so. SB 493 (Hernandez) – Pharmacists: After much negotiation, SFMS/CMA was able to include language requiring additional training for pharmacists to initiate and administer vaccines, and provide contraceptives under this bill. We were also able to eliminate language that would have allowed pharmacists to independently prescribe dangerous smoking cessation drugs such as Chantix, instead limiting them to nicotine replacement therapy smoking cessation medications. The bill passed Assembly Business, Profession and Consumer Protection Committee last week and now moves to Assembly Health Committee. SFMS/CMA strongly believes that simply expanding the scope of practice of allied health practitioners to give them independent and/or expanded practice will do nothing to improve access to care or quality of care in our state. Allowing practitioners to perform procedures they simply aren’t trained to do can only lead to unpredictable outcomes, higher costs and greater fragmentation of care. Using successful models as a guide, California should be looking toward integrated, team-based care led by physicians. These teams will streamline care, maintain and improve patient safety and decrease costs of health care throughout the state. Comments are closed.
