This year the legislature had many bills to work through, but their main consideration was Washington state’s projected $12B-to-$16B budget deficit. That set the tone for many legislators to deny any bill that had a fiscal note attached to it. The legislative session ended on April 27th but the governor may possibly call them back for a special session to work on the budget.
Even with the budget concerns being omnipresent, the legislators were able to pass bills that are important to PAs and healthcare in general. The following bills passed and have been signed by the governor, or are on their way there:
- HB 1162 – Concerning workplace violence in health care settings.
- HB 1186 – Expanding the situations in which medications can be dispensed or delivered from hospitals and health care entities.
- SB 5372 – Creating the Medicaid access program.
- HB 1640 – Placing licenses issued in chapters 18.71B and 18.71C RCW under the authority of the uniform disciplinary act. (PA compact rules)
- HB 1686 – Creating a health care entity registry. This was pruned down to just be a study and won’t affect PA practices at this time. We’ll need to watch for the study to come back.
- HB 1706 – Aligning the implementation of application programming interfaces for prior authorization with federal guidelines.
- HB 1718 – Concerning well-being programs for certain health care professionals.
Unfortunately, the ARNP/PA parity bill (HB 1430) died in the Senate Ways and Means committee but will be back next year. In the interim, our lobbyist, and the ARNP United lobbyist, will be talking with key members to make sure the bill can make it over the last hurdle.
If you want to check out any of the above bills in more depth, log on to https://leg.wa.gov/ and enter the number of the bill in the “bills and initiatives” drop down. That will take you to the bill’s page where you can read the final bill language and see its path through the legislature.
Respectfully submitted, Linda Dale