7 March 2024
The 2024 Legislative Session officially ended today. This short session kept us busy, despite our priority scope modernization bill being stuck in Sunrise Review status. The WANP weighed in on many bills that could impact the naturopathic physician profession and made sure our profession was on the minds of our lawmakers as they considered various bills before them.
In general, the WANP weighed in as supportive of most legislation that would reduce costs to patients and increase access to care. Bills that we supported that were passed by the legislature this session included coverage of preventive services without cost sharing (HB 1957), reducing the cost of inhalers and epinephrine auto-injectors (HB 1979), clarifying an "established relationship" for coverage of audio-only telemedicine (SB 5821), updating language related to reproductive and gender-affirming health care (HB 1954), updating the definition of vaccine (HB 2157), increasing access to HIV post-exposure prophylaxis drugs (SB 6127), and concerning provision of an ultrasound (SB 6151).
Unfortunately, several bills we supported did not pass this session. Most notably, our intensive efforts in broad coalition with other health care practitioners to improve provider contract compensation (HB 1655) were not as successful as we had hoped. The WANP also supported efforts to increase access to portable orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST) (HB 2166), the establishment of a prescribing psychologist certificate (SB 6144), required coverage of obesity medications (SB 6182), and creating a "Parks Rx" pilot program (SB 5095).
The WANP also closely monitored the efforts by nurse practitioners and physician assistants to achieve pay parity (SB 5373), which also did not advance this session.
We expect a busy interim related to our Sunrise Review and look forward to returning fully to the 2025 Legislative Session to advance our priority bill and efforts around increasing reimbursement for our doctors!