Health Policy Update: SB 187 Pulled from Consideration

After careful consideration of every possibility, LANP Leadership along with our Health Policy team, lobbyists and our legislative champions, Senator Regina Barrow, Representative Robert Johnson, Representative Dustin Miller and Representative Tom Willmott have decided to pull SB 187 from House floor consideration tomorrow. The decision was made after exhausting every possible path forward. SB187 simply does not have enough "yes" votes needed to pass.

On Tuesday, May 31, when the bill was last scheduled to be heard, Rep. Johnson surveyed the legislators on the House floor before the vote. Unfortunately, we were short by a larger number of votes than anticipated. With insufficient support, we decided to postpone, knowing that Friday would be our absolute last chance to have the bill considered.

That said, the legislative process is such that if you know the bill doesn't have the support needed to pass, it is courtesy not to debate the bill on the floor. If we thought we could get close enough by adding an amendment, we would have proceeded with the debate and voting process.

While we are disappointed in the outcome this session, we feel there are a number of things we will immediately continue working towards to further our efforts.

1. With the expansion of Medicaid, we going to closely monitor the effects of expansion on health care delivery in Louisiana. We will aggressively campaign the urgent need for access and therefore, removal of collaborative practice. We will need your help and will provide more details soon on how we are going to do proceed.
2. We are also committed to keeping the overwhelming participation of our members in health policy year-around. We will be asking members in each district of the state to visit legislators throughout the year. Again, once we have our plan quickly in place, we will reach out for designees.
3. We will continue to be vigilant in any attempt by the opposition to draft rules that would affect collaborative practice.

We will continue to push this initiative forward. The environment for acceptance of the removal of the collaborative practice agreement is growing favorable. It just takes time. In 2012, the first time we introduced this bill, it did not pass the first committee hearing. This year, we passed the entire Senate and the House Health & Welfare Committee. We were mere votes away from passing this bill.  Even though it is discouraging today, we really have come a long way and will continue to progress.

Lastly, we can not express the amount of appreciation and gratitude this organization has for each and every member, non-member, patient and all other supporters of this bill. Your emails, phone calls, visits to the Capitol WERE effective and very much appreciated. Thank you for ALL your hard work and support!

Lisa Bayhi, DNP, FNP‐BC, ACNP‐BC, FAANP, LANP President

Buzz Jeansonne, FNP, LANP Health Policy Chair

Rebecca Thibodaux, Executive Director