Less Noticeable Bills Impacting Medical Community Make the Books

TALLAHASSEE—A bevy of healthcare-related bills rolled through the 2011 legislative session, with Medicaid reform taking center stage.

Some bills gaining less attention than others include:

•  Blood banks legislation that would have provided the oversight of blood bank operations and included provisions addressing transparency, conflict-of-interest, financial documentation and executive compensation failed just as Florida’s Blood Centers is exploring a merger with Community Blood Centers of Florida and Florida Blood Services (SB 94/SB 1736/HB 119).
• Medical liability procedural safeguards legislation (HB 479) passed that provides several litigation protections for providers in medical liability actions, such as disciplining expert witnesses for giving deceptive or fraudulent testimony; prohibiting payment denials by any payer—public or private—for medical errors from being admitted as evidence in a subsequent malpractice action; allowing that a provider’s failure to comply with any federal requirement isn’t admissible as evidence in any medical negligence case; and allowing hospitals to use scientific diagnostic disease methodologies adopted by their medical review committee as a defense.
• Rural Primary Care Residency Program legislation passed (SB 2000), which provides $3 million for a rural primary care residency expansion initiative available to osteopathic and allopathic graduate medical education programs.
• A bill that would have defined a scope of practice for surgical first assistants, and would also have stipulated certification, education and training requirements for them, failed (SB 742).
• or Nursing (FCN) failed (SB 674/HB 327). State lawmakers established the FCN in 2001 to address the supply and demand for nursing, yet discontinued funding in 2010.
• Legislation that would have required hospitals to use a nurse staffing collaborative council or an existing committee to participate in the development and evaluation of the nurse staffing plan failed (SB 1118/HB 919). 
• Gov. Rick Scott quickly signed into law SB 400 governing treatment based-drug courts. It expands court programs as a sentencing option in eight counties—Broward, Escambia, Hillsborough, Marion, Orange, Pinellas, Polk and Volusia.
• Two of Gov. Rick Scott’s priority bills that passed include HB 353 requiring drug screening for adult welfare recipients, and HB 7185 that provides an average tax break of $1,100 per year for 15,000 small businesses—including medical practices—as a step toward cutting Florida’s annual $2 billion corporate tax.
• Four of five abortion-related bills passed, including SB 196/HB 501 that diverts proceeds from Choose Life license plates to Choose Life Inc. to assist pregnant women instead of counties; SB 1414/HB 97 to create healthcare plans through the federal healthcare law that cannot provide coverage for abortions; a requirement for minors seeking a judicial waiver for parental notification of an abortion to secure the waiver in district court instead of the wider-reaching appeals court (SB 1770/HB 1247); and SB 1744/HB 1127 that provides women preparing to undergo an abortion the opportunity to have the results and images of an ultrasound of the fetus explained to them. A third-trimester ban on abortion failed, that would have called for viability of the fetus and required doctors who perform abortions to receive ethics training (SB 1748/HB 1397).
• “Doctors and guns” SB 155, which limits occasions when physicians may ask patients whether they own firearms, and “smoking” legislation—SB 204 and HB 39—that outlaws synthetic marijuana both passed.
• Legislation concerning youth athlete concussions failed (SB 730/HB 301). It would have required the Florida High School Athletic Association to remove athletes showing signs of a concussion from the field of play until they receive clearance from a physician. 

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