The House version of our bill, HB2975 just passed out of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee favorably and has been placed on the Senate’s Local & Consent Calendar. As planned, Senator Harris offered a committee substitute that included the additional language we requested requiring the TMB to use a stakeholder process to set the rules for approving CME courses. By placing it on the Local & Consent Calendar, I believe it has a good chance of passing the Senate quickly. After that, I believe it heads back to the House for concurrence from Rep. Hunter and then heads to the Governor.
You can watch video of the hearing here, starting about 12 minutes in: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/streamav/ext/ch6.ram (note that this link probably won’t work after 5/19)
The Senate has already passed an identical bill, SB1360, but it is tied up in the House. It might still get through.... But now we have two identical bills – one in both chambers – which significantly improves our chances of getting one of them passed.
Our bill was also added to HB1013 (the larger TMB reform bill) which is currently awaiting a hearing in the Senate H&HS committee. It’s unclear whether or not it will get scheduled for a hearing by Senator Nelson. I understand that efforts are underway to add it as an amendment to another bill in the Senate which might improve its chances.
Onward!
