The last week of the legislative session was somewhat slow for us while legislators disagreed about education bills. Because of that, committee work halted as neither the House nor Senate made committee assignments for the bills that had crossed to opposite houses until late in the week, which was not in time to schedule committee meetings.

We will only have two weeks for bills to get through committees or they will go dormant for the year. So, this coming week and the next promise to be some of the busiest of session.

Despite there being no committee meetings, we still used the time to prepare, of course. We met with authors regarding concerns with SB458, the nurse practitioner/nurse midwife bill, and HB1013, which creates the patients’ bill of rights. Some of you responded with concerns about HB1013 and we were able to convey those to the Senate author.

We also discussed the state’s health information exchange system and concerns with it with legislators. Legislators themselves also asked questions of the Health Care Authority staff during the Senate Health and Human Services Committee meeting Thursday. The implementation of the system will most likely be delayed because of the time it will take to enter providers into the system and legislators continue to discuss the costs. OHCA staff stated again that patient information that is protected by federal law will continue to be confidential but legislators expressed concern and asked about security breaches.

We will keep you posted as committees begin to move again as we propel into the last half of session.