On January 11th State Representative Keith Frederick wrote:
"I am drafting a bill that will include not only the revisions I previously referred to but to re-write much of the rules and regulations which in my opinion are not supported by the original legislation I drafted and that was passed.
I will seek to reduce CME requirement to 25 hours per year ( like other docs) and define collaborative practice arrangements to be the same as for Nurse Practitioners and to allow the same geographic proximity rules as for NPs.
I spoke with a potential Senate sponsor this am so that we will have my bill working it’s way thru the house and a corresponding Senate bill working it’s way through the Senate. The drafting service could not complete it in time for the bill to be filed today but I plan to file it upon return to the Capitol on Tuesday as Monday is MLK Day. Also, reducing the application fee.
Again disclaimer: these changes are proposed and to become law the bill will have to be passed in House and Senate and be singed by the Governor. There will be around 2,000 bills filed this year and less than 100 are likely to get to the Governor’s desk. However, the odds were these same in 2014 and we prevailed and I believe we can do this.
Testimony from you APs who are in the trenches and from your collaborating Physicians and potential collaborating Physicians will be critical. I will have some bullet point suggestions for thoughts and statistics to cover in testimony but all of this will be well familiar to all of you who have come this far in your medical training.
More to come, but it’s progress. I also filed a bill today, The Increased Access to Opioid Addiction Treatment Act that provides a critical role in MAT for Opioid Addiction tx for Assistant Physicians."
Keith Frederick
Orthopedic Surgeon/State Representative
Orthopedic Surgeon & State Rep in 121st Dist.