S 282 - An Act relative to reserving beds in nursing homes during certain leaves of absence

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 282 | Status of the bill

This bill would codify current MassHealth regulation to allow a MassHealth nursing home resident to leave a nursing home for twenty days for medical reasons and fifteen days for non-medical reasons. The Division of Medical Assistance would be required to reimburse nursing homes, at the same daily rate the facility received prior to the resident’s leave, for residents who have to leave the nursing home for medical or non-medical reasons.

S 283 - An Act to protect the interests of consumers in continuing care resident communities

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 283 | Status of the bill

S 445 - An Act clarifying deductions that can be made from private long term disability insurance plans

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 445 | Status of the bill

S 446 - An Act relative to promoting patient access and affordability in treating eye and vision conditions

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 446 | Status of the bill

Optometrists are recognized by Massachusetts General Law as eye care providers. In this capacity, optometrists routinely diagnose, manage and treat ocular diseases and abnormalities. They also prescribe drugs for certain diseases and eyeglasses or contact lenses for vision correction. As such, optometrists should be included as providers of eye care services under the various health insurance plans. This legislation will expand freedom of provider choice resulting in the patient having the ability to receive quality eye care services from their local optometrist. 

S 447 - An Act requiring standard credentialing of physicians by health insurers

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 447 | Status of the bill

This legislation requires all state-licensed carriers to use statewide uniform credentialing and re-credentialing applications and to complete the credentialing process for 95% of clean physician applications within 30 calendar days. Facilities delegated to complete the credentialing function on behalf of the carrier are exempt from these requirements.

S 527 - An Act defining the use of observational services

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 527 | Status of the bill

This bill establishes a standard definition of observation services and guidelines for health plans and providers to use to ensure that medically necessary care is provided to patients in the appropriate setting. It would also ensure that physicians and providers can communicate the correct information to hospitalized patients who under current practices are often confused when they are told that their hospital care is considered outpatient care when they are hospitalized overnight. 

S 528 - An Act establishing health care criteria for performance excellence

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 528 | Status of the bill

This legislation would utilize the Baldridge Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence, a nationally accepted format, for measuring performance excellence in health care as part of the work of the Commonwealth’s Quality & Cost Council. The Baldridge National Quality Program, administered through the National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed the Baldridge Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence. The Health Care criteria help health care organizations respond to current challenges and address all the complexities of delivering today’s results while preparing effectively for the future. The institutional self analysis and site visit by a team of performance management leaders focus on health care and service delivery outcomes, patient and other customer outcomes, financial and market outcomes, human resource outcomes, organizational effectiveness outcomes, and leadership and social responsibility outcomes.

S 529 - An Act establishing the Massachusetts Childhood Vaccine Program and the Massachusetts Immunization Registry

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 529 | Status of the bill

This bill establishes the Vaccine Purchase Trust Fund to support a universal purchase system for childhood vaccines and a vaccine purchase advisory council to recommend the types of vaccine to be purchased and the amount of funding needed each fiscal year. Each health insurer is required to pay a child immunization fee to be deposited in the Fund. The bill strengthens current law by requiring health insurers to provide benefits for recommended child and adult immunizations. DPH is directed to establish and operate a computerized Massachusetts Immunization Registry for access by licensed health care providers, school nurses and registration officials, and local boards of health.

S 530 - An Act protecting the confidentiality of patient prescription records

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 530 | Status of the bill

This bill advances the state interests in health care cost containment and the protection of public health by prohibiting pharmacists, pharmacies, pharmacy benefits managers, insurance companies, third party administrators, electronic transmission intermediaries, or other similar entities from licensing, transferring, using, selling, or leasing patient-identifiable and prescriber-identifiable data to data miners for commercial purposes.

S 531 - An Act reforming the administration of health care

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 531 | Status of the bill

S 532 - An Act relative to eligibility for coverage

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 532 | Status of the bill

S 533 - An Act relative to equitable funding for the Division of Health Care Finance & Policy

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 533 | Status of the bill

This bill will create a more equitable assessment to support the administrative operations of the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy (Division).  The original rationale of the hospital assessment was to cover the costs of administering the Uncompensated Care Pool (now the Health Safety Net) and analyzing hospital data.  The Division’s role has since expanded to the development of health care policy, rate setting, and data analysis for all health care providers, as well as the recent addition of administering the operations of the Health Care Quality and Cost Council.  Currently, acute care hospitals are responsible for at least sixty-five percent of the Division’s total expenses, including not only the state’s budget appropriations, but also additional fringe and employee benefits.  In FY2009, the Division’s budget increased by 22 percent to $17 million. While the work performed by the Division is an important resource for the entire health care community, the cost of that work should be apportioned equitably.

S 534 - An Act relative to the provider's council

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 534 | Status of the bill

S 535 - An Act requiring MassHealth to provide an explanation of benefits to beneficiaries

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 535 | Status of the bill

This bill requires MassHealth to provide an explanation of benefits form to any person who receives health care covered by MassHealth. Each explanation of benefits shall include a printed statement requesting that the recipient of MassHealth benefits notify its fraud hotline of any discrepancy in payment for services that may not have been provided, and indicating that a beneficiary who has reported an adjudicated claim of fraud shall be granted a cash award to be determined by MassHealth.

S 536 - An Act requiring reimbursement for the costs of providing competent interpreter services

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 536 | Status of the bill

This bill is necessary to ensure that hospitals that provide acute psychiatric services are compensated for the costs of complying with Chapter 66 of the Acts of 2000 “An Act Requiring Competent Interpreter Services in the Delivery of Certain Acute Health Care Services”. Chapter 66 mandated that hospitals that provide acute mental health services must also provide competent interpreter services. There is direction in Chapter 66 to the Division of Medical Assistance to provide reimbursement for said interpreter services, yet is silent on any DMA “carve-out” firm’s obligation, or the obligation of other third party payers, including private insurers. It seems that if there is agreement that one payer should be obligated to meet the hospital’s costs of providing a service that it would be fair that all third-party payers be held to the same standard. 

S 537 - An Act requiring the Division of Medical Assistance to provide adequate rates

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 537 | Status of the bill

This bill would require that hospitals receive reasonable annual rate adjustments, commensurate to the Medical Consumer Price Increase for the previous year. This bill is necessary to ensure that the state recognizes that hospitals’ costs increase, and therefore should be adjusted appropriately. Over the past four years, the Medical CPI would have averaged approximately 3.35% per year.

S 538 - An Act to promote electronic transmission of health care transactions

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 538 | Status of the bill

This bill would enforce the use of electronic transactions in health care.  Beginning on January 1, 2012, the legislation offers that eligibility for a health plan transaction, health care payments and remittance, and health care claims would all be filed electronically

S 539 - An Act to promote the nursing profession and promote safe patient care

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 539 | Status of the bill

For some time now, there has been considerable debate and discussion of the issue of patient safety as it relates to the role of nursing in our health care facilities. This legislation acknowledges the incredibly hard work of nurses on hospital floors, and the compassion with which they deliver extraordinary care. The legislation also acknowledges rapidly changing patient acuity within those facilities and the necessity to respond to those changes equally as fast. As we continue to cope with a increasing shortage of nurses, and an elderly population on the rise, it is imperative that we address this topic sooner rather than later.

This legislation accomplishes a number of desirable goals, which includes: (1) an analysis of our workforce needs, and a redesign of state initiatives to address the nursing shortage, (2) various grant programs to attract our best and brightest students to the nursing field, (2) programs to entice nurses to enter academia and instill their rich experiences in the next crop of nurses, which is the real shortage we’re facing, (3) establishes a “Nursing Care Committee,” which is to craft the staffing plan, (4) allows for DPH to establish a staffing plan if the facility fails to do so, or fails to adequately do so, and (5) limits mandatory overtime to only emergency situations at a hospital.

This legislation does not include any specific nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. There is ample information available with regard to the need for adequate nursing and staff levels in hospitals, but there is no evidence-based research that recommends a specific ratio. Ratios fail to account for patient acuity, the experience level of the nurses on duty, the physical ability of those nurses, the availability of support staff, or support technology, nor do they consider the facility itself.

S 540 - An Act to provide for tobacco cessation benefits

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 540 | Status of the bill

This legislation would provide tobacco cessation benefits for all Commonwealth Care and GIC insurance plans. Low-income populations smoke at a much higher rate than the general adult population. The negative health impacts associated with smoking are well documented, and their impact on health care budgets, whether private or public, is felt more and more every year. Providing cessation benefits will have both long-term and short-term cost savings benefits to these publicly funded programs, and most importantly, will provide positive health benefits to the recipients, such as reduced cardiovascular and lung disease. Tobacco cessation is more cost-effective than other common, covered disease prevention interventions.

S 541 - An Act relative to strengthening the DoN program

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 541 | Status of the bill

S 833 - An Act relative to the modernization of optometric patient care

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 833 | Status of the bill

This legislation will allow optometrists, who are currently authorized to diagnose and co-manage the treatment of a patient’s glaucoma, to actually provide the treatment for glaucoma. As well, the legislation would allow optometrists to keep an epinephrine pen (“Epi-pen”) on-site and utilize it in the emergency treatment of anaphylactic shock, as currently permitted with coaches, nurses and other professions. Finally, this legislation will allow optometrists to write limited prescriptions for those pharmaceutical agents specifically used in the treatment of eye conditions and disease, which are integral to the practice of optometry, including antibiotics for ocular infections and anti-glaucoma medications. The legislation, which prohibits the prescribing of Schedule II drugs (i.e. Oxycontin), further prohibits the prescription of hallucinogenic drugs and anabolic steroids.

S 834 - An Act reforming the medical malpractice system

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 834 | Status of the bill

This bill authorizes the Betsy Lehman Center to establish an adverse event disclosure and compensation program to promote patient-provider communication and patient safety in the case of an unanticipated outcome of medical treatment. This bill renders inadmissible in any judicial or administrative action all statements or conduct expressing error by a health care provider and requires that a plaintiff in a malpractice case give the defendant 182 days written notice before commencing an action. It establishes that malpractice liability shall be several and not joint so providers only pay their proportionate damages, extends the collateral source offset to prevent plaintiff overcompensation by accounting for anticipated awards, and clarifies the qualifications of expert witnesses, the rules of evidence, and the tribunal’s role in malpractice actions. Lastly, the bill sets the interest rate that can be charged on prejudgment interest for plaintiff’s damages at the Treasury bill rate by removing the additional four percent currently permissible by law.

S 988 - An Act to improve access to child and adolescent mental health services

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 988 | Status of the bill

This legislation is important because Licensed Educational Psychologists provide services to children and adolescents more cost-effectively than some other providers who currently get insurance reimbursement.  They are also uniquely prepared to work with young people whose problems are related to or are affecting their educational experience. Finally, this bill would impact only a small number of Educational Psychologists who are in private practice or who work in agencies such as mental health clinics and hospitals.  Most Educational Psychologists are directly employed by school systems to work in the schools and will not be affected by this legislation.

S 1131 - An Act adopting the nurse licensure compact

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1131 | Status of the bill

This bill authorizes Massachusetts to join the growing the list of states that have adopted the national Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC). As of January 1, 2011, 24 states have joined the Compact, including Maine and Rhode Island. The NLC follows the mutual recognition model of nurse licensure that allows a nurse to have one license in his or her state of residency and to practice in other states, subject to each state’s practice law and regulation. Adoption of the NLC by the Commonwealth will decrease barriers to nursing care and will help ensure the availability of licensed nurses in the Commonwealth, especially during a disaster or during other times of great need for qualified nursing services. The NLC will also provide for greater nurse mobility and will enhance access to essential data on the nursing workforce.

S 1133 - An Act relative to certified professional midwives

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1133 | Status of the bill

This legislation seeks to offer both consumer protection and professional recognition for midwives. Plenty of new parents are choosing to give birth with the assistance of a professional midwife, and they deserve to know the services they’re utilizing are able and qualified. Similarly, those who offer their services deserve to know that individuals who offer their services are equally as qualified. This legislation establishes a committee on midwifery within the Board of Registration in Medicine charged with adopting licensure requirements for midwives, including the potential to prescribe, as necessary. Any actions would have to be approved by the Commissioner. By setting clear guidelines, the Legislature would ensure that residents across the Commonwealth receive competent care throughout their pregnancy.

S 1135 - An Act relative to concussion prevention

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1135 | Status of the bill

S 1136 - An Act relative to disciplinary actions under the Board of Registration in Medicine

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1136 | Status of the bill

The Board of Registration of Medicine has the statutory mandate to protect the public by removing incompetent physicians from the practice of medicine. Shortening the time period for reporting this critical information to the Board protects the public safety. This legislation does not add to the numerous reporting requirements of these entities. It simply expedites getting critical public safety information into the hands of the Board.

S 1137 - An Act relative to health care provider transportation

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1137 | Status of the bill

This bill offers that any health care facility must provide transportation via taxi, car or bus service for the return commute of all resident physicians, medical students and other health care providers who have worked for more than 16 consecutive hours, and for any health care provider who judges herself or himself to be too fatigued to safely operate a motor vehicle.

S 1138 - An Act relative to Home Health Aides

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1138 | Status of the bill

This legislation seeks to refine the Commonwealth’s Nurse Practice Act (NPA) to allow the administering of certain medication to home health patients by trained and certified home health aides. It requires that home health agencies provide training and establish documentation protocols according to the nurse delegation model and regulations that will be drafted by the Board of Registration in Nursing and the Department of Public Health. It also stipulates that any licensed nurse who delegates a task in compliance with the adopted rules shall not be subject to disciplinary action by the Board of Nursing for the performance of a person to whom the nursing activity or task is assigned.

This bill will help prepare for the growth in aging clients living at home with stable medical conditions, remove barriers to home based services that a nurse may not be able to perform daily, provide guidance for professional staff and agencies, and utilize nursing skills more effectively.

S 1139 - An Act relative to MassHealth enrollment for persons leaving correctional facilities

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1139 | Status of the bill

This bill would allow inmates the ability to sign up for MassHealth benefits as a process of their discharge from incarceration. This would allow for a continuum of care for a population of people who traditionally receive little or no health care services. 

S 1140 - An Act relative to medical spas

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1140 | Status of the bill

S 1141 - An Act relative to patient safety

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1141 | Status of the bill

This bill would limit variability in patient flow through a hospital’s Emergency Room. Each hospital with an Emergency Department would be required to file a plan with the Department of Public Health that demonstrates it has implemented measures to smooth out variability, thereby easing patient backlog and the need for emergency diversions. The plan would be subject to approval by the Department. No one method would be mandated; rather hospitals would be permitted to determine on their own how best to achieve the result.

S 1142 - An Act relative to patient, medical intern, and resident-physician safety and protection

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1142 | Status of the bill

This bill would authorize and direct the Department of Public Health to promulgate rules and regulations relative to limiting the number of hours medical interns and resident-physicians work in any given week. Currently, most interns and resident-physicians work anywhere from 100-120 hours a week. This bill would also create an advisory board within DPH that would assist the department in drafting the regulations and would serve in an advisory capacity for future revisions of said regulations. 

S 1143 - An Act relative to robotic surgery in the Commonwealth

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1143 | Status of the bill

S 1144 - An Act relative to technical changes pertaining to the Board of Registration in Medicine

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1144 | Status of the bill

S 1145 - An Act relative to the registration of podiatrists

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1145 | Status of the bill

This legislation expands the scope of practice of podiatry to include the ankle, thus improving patient access to foot and ankle care, and providing more cost effective care in the process. Podiatrists have extensive training with feet and ankles, and at this point are only hindered from treating them by Section 13 of Chapter 112, which limits them to the “diagnosis and treatment of the structures of the human foot.” The legislation, a true product of compromise, allows ankle surgery by a podiatrist who has attained the appropriate certification or documented advanced training as determined by the Board of Registration in Podiatry. Additional requirements include approval from the surgical credentialing committee at the particular facility where the procedure is to occur. The legislation is very careful to limit podiatrists to procedures they are currently capable of performing, and seeks to afford consumers a safe, affordable option for care.

S 1146 - An Act relative to the statewide head injury program

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1146 | Status of the bill

At this time SHIP exists only by Trust Fund and a line item in the budget. There would be no funding attached to this bill since all it does is amend the MRC statute in Chapter 6 Section 78 to codify the program.

S 1147 - An Act relative to volunteer physicians

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1147 | Status of the bill

The Board of Registration of Medicine will grant or renew a qualified physician's registration for free so the physician can participate in the free care program operated by a non-profit organization. The Board may restrict, by regulation, physicians’ scope of practice whose registration is granted or renewed under this section. Physicians licensed to provide voluntary care are not required to carry malpractice insurance but are required to meet all other Board requirements regarding care, education and competence in medicine.

S 1148 - An Act requiring hospitals to notify patients of physician discipline

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1148 | Status of the bill

This bill will require that hospitals have a procedure in place to notify patients when a physician treating patients at that hospital is disciplined or suspended. A recent case involving a physician who left a patient during surgery to go and cash a check, revealed that hospitals do not have formal policies in place to notify patients when physicians are under suspension or subject to disciplinary action. Such a policy is necessary to ensure that patients are properly treated and that they have access to full information about their treatment.

S 1149 - An Act to establish a vision care registry

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1149 | Status of the bill

This bill would instruct the Department of Public Health to maintain a vision care registry. Such a registry is important in ensuring that both children and senior citizens are not only getting their eyes screened but are also getting the treatment they need to maintain their vision.

S 1150 - An Act to improve the delivery of health care

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1150 | Status of the bill

This bill seeks a reduction in medical errors and infections in hospitals by using a “checklist of care.” The checklist, already utilized by many health care providers and endorsed by the World Health Organization, would save the Commonwealth hundreds of millions of dollars a year by decreasing patient harm from numerous procedures. It is estimated that 34,000 health care –related infections cost Massachusetts up to $473 million a year. If checklists were adopted nationwide, the country could save an estimated $15-25 billion a year.  The bill also specifies that the Department of Public Health would develop and distribute checklists of care for hospitals within the Commonwealth; additionally, the Department would have the ability to require hospitals to report on their use of checklists.

S 1151 - An Act to prohibit mandatory overtime for the health care workforce

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1151 | Status of the bill

This bill prohibits hospitals from requiring a member of the health care workforce to work more than 16 hours in a 24 hour period. A member of the health care workforce who works 12 consecutive hours in a shift shall be given at least 8 hours off from any work between shifts. The bill limits a hospital’s use of mandatory overtime to emergency situations related to patient safety. Members of the health care workforce are protected from discipline for refusing to work beyond the limits set forth in the bill.

S 1153 - An Act to require equitable payment from the Commonwealth

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1153 | Status of the bill

This bill would require the Executive Office of Health & Human Services agencies to compensate behavioral health hospitals their full negotiated rate for behavioral health services provided to MassHealth Patients who are also clients of such agencies, for whom no appropriate alternative placement is available. EOHHS agencies would no longer be allowed to use the “AND” rate category to reimburse hospitals for services provided to an individual who the agency could not appropriately place elsewhere. Hospitals would have to demonstrate a good faith effort to make such appropriate alternative placement before receiving such full rate.

S 1154 - An Act modernizing the determination of need review for non-acute hospitals

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1154 | Status of the bill

Under Chapter 495 of the Acts of 1991, the legislature effectively deregulated the Determination of Need requirement for acute care hospitals under the belief that the market would drive the need for expansions and changes in services. Similar changes were not made for non-acute hospitals when their licensure requirements were changed in the late 1990’s. Although a non-acute care hospital provides a similar level of services and requires a similar level of resources as an acute care hospital, it is treated like a nursing home for the purpose of reviewing changes in services, capital expenditures, or major construction. It is important to note that this bill does not decrease overall licensure or regulatory oversight of non-acute hospitals, but allows these providers to make important and necessary improvements to their facilities to increase the delivery of patient care.

S 1155 - An Act relative to public health volunteer responders

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1155 | Status of the bill

S 1340 - An Act relative to eligibility for state group health insurance

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1340 | Status of the bill

This legislation provides access to the Group Insurance Commission to adjunct faculty teaching four or more courses per year in the Massachusetts public higher education system. The Commonwealth's colleges and universities rely on adjunct faculty to teach an increasing amount of their courses. In fact, adjunct faculty teach more than half of the courses at the Commonwealth's community colleges and at both colleges and universities they teach the same courses as their fulltime employees for a fraction of the salary and no health benefits. To qualify for benefits, adjunct faculty must teach the equivalent of at least two courses per semester providing three or more credits or four courses per calendar year. The courses must be offered at state public higher education institutions, but can be offered at multiple institutions in the same year. For example, an adjunct faculty member would qualify for health insurance if they taught four courses at UMass Boston or two courses at UMass Boston and two courses at Bunker Hill Community College.

S 1487 - An Act establishing a health care electronic prescribing tax credit

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1487 | Status of the bill

This bill aims to continue the promotion of Health IT in the Commonwealth by offering tax credits for providers that utilize e-prescribing technology.  Massachusetts has ranked #1 in the nation for use of e-prescribing for the third year in a row, according to Health IT network Surescripts.

S 1601 - An Act relative to sleep deprivation avoidance and promotion of good sleeping practices

Documents & Status: Text of Senate 1601 | Status of the bill