ARAPA Legislative Announcement Senate Bill 152
Posted almost 4 years ago by Tara Bruner in Legislative
On behalf of the ARAPA Legislative Committee,
I am pleased to announce we have a PA Scope of Practice Bill that was introduced into the Arkansas Legislation TODAY! Senate Bill 152 is sponsored by Senator Kim Hammer and Representative Joy Springer.
This bill must now pass through committees, senate and house and then go before legislature for approval and during these steps there is a chance we may need to revise; however, we chose to go big and ask what we need to improve PA practice in Arkansas and have parity with other healthcare providers.
Our asks in this bill are:
Having a PA advocate on full Medical Board
Ability to prescribe schedule II medication for acute need (scheduled II opioids for 5 days, and refill of amphetamines)
Ability to practice in disaster and emergency care situations
Ability to call time-of-death
Modernize and update antiquated PA language
This comes after many hours of meetings, drafts, conversations with Arkansas Medical Board, Arkansas Medical Society, Lobbyist meetings, calls, etc. All with the appreciated guidance from AAPA. This process if far from over but a huge step in the right direction for the PAs of Arkansas.
Please contact Tara Bruner ARAPA Legislative Chair with any questions tara.bruner@gmail.com
You can find the bill and status Here
Comments
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This is great! What about direct reimbursement for Arkansas Medicaid patients? I didn’t get a job because PA’s apparently cannot be directly reimbursed for Medicaid patients. I’d love some follow up on this. Thanks!!
I have the same question as Matthew Miller. My current position is affected by Medicaid reimbursement.
So glad to hear. Is there anything we can do to help push this along?
Matthew and Carol--approval for PA reimbursement under Arkansas Medicaid goes through another process outside of our state practice act. Getting rendering provider status (which allows the PA to be recognized and reimbursed for seeing the patient) is a priority for ARAPA, however we've had more difficulty trying to schedule meetings due to Covid restrictions etc. Please email Tara (tara.bruner@gmail.com) your stories of job difficulties resulting from lack of rendering provider status so we can compile these as evidence when we are able to get the meeting set up. At this time, Arkansas Medicaid allows PAs to see Medicaid patients, but the encounter must be billed under the supervising physician. Reimbursement is 100% using this mechanism (this worked for me successfully in my previous clinic).
Heather, thanks so much for your response!! I’ll send an email to Tara.
Yes, feel free to send me issues. I am in dialogue with AR Medicaid. We also have the ear of the legislators now too, some are involved with Medicaid. We are working diligently. We had good conversations prior to COVID, but the Medicaid office is now tending to this again. Please stay posted as we concurrently work on regulations as well as statute.
Also thank you Julie, as this information passes through committees etc, we have a strategy to contact legislators, those in leadership of those committees as well as who their consitutents are, I compare that to licensed PAs zipcodes and contact individually, along with a script, what is needed.
As it passes into votes of the house/senate etc, we may have a large ask for each to contact their senator/representative... STAY TUNED.
I am allowed to see MCD with my supervising MD physically in the facility. However, I have never been able to obtain ability to script medications for MCD patients. As a clinic, we have worked around these issues. It is inconvenient for myself and my supervising MD as this limits my scope of practice. I am glad to see that ARAPA is working on this issue.
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