A pair of big wins capped a successful past week for medicine, as the Texas House of Representatives on Friday afternoon signed off on both curbing the impositions of prior authorization and updating the state’s immunization registry.
Haters of preauthorization burdens – and if you’re reading this, chances are you’re among them – will celebrate the House’s passage of House Bill 3459 by Rep. Greg Bonnen, MD (R-Friendswood). The bill attacks the plague of prior authorization requirements in two major ways.
First, for certain services, if a physician earns insurer approval on 80% of preauthorization requests for the service in one calendar year, the doctor will be exempt from preauthorization for that service in the next calendar year. HB 3459 would allow physicians to gain those exemptions on an every-other-year cycle.
Secondly, the bill requires insurers’ utilization reviews to be with a physician in the same or similar specialty as the patient’s physician.
After passing by a 127-16 vote, HB 3459 now heads to the Senate.
ImmTrac2 upgrade/records bill earns unanimous passage
House lawmakers were even more enthusiastic about modernizing the state’s immunization database, ImmTrac2, as House Bill 4272 by Rep. Stephanie Klick (R-Fort Worth) passed Friday by a 135-0 vote.
The bill would improve ImmTrac2’s interoperability with electronic health records and simplify the way people give consent on whether to have their records stored in the database. It also would ensure that disaster immunization records are retained in the registry for at least seven years, and require the state to send at least two notifications ahead of a person’s records being deleted out of the database, giving the person a chance to consent to retaining the records beyond the seven-year mark.
Expanding coverage for diagnostic mammography
Austin radiologist Sarah Avery, MD, was scheduled to testify for the Texas Medical Association today on a bill that would expand the types of diagnostic mammography services health plans are required to cover. Dr. Avery will tell the House Insurance Committee why it’s vital to pass Senate Bill 1065 by Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston), which would require insurers covering diagnostic imaging to provide patients at least the same cost-sharing as coverage for a screening mammogram. Dr. Avery testified in favor of the bill last month for the Senate Business & Commerce Committee. The full Senate approved SB 1065 on April 29.
Nothing but smoke: TMA opposes weak e-cig tax bill
A proposed tax on electronic cigarettes has passed the House. However, TMA and others committed to reducing e-cigarette use aren’t supporting House Bill 211 by Rep. Shawn Thierry (D-Houston) – because it doesn’t go far enough.
HB 211 would impose a miniscule tax of 7 cents per “milliliter or fractional part of a milliliter” of each e-cigarette product sold. Texas Tobacco Control Partners (TTCP), which includes TMA, has determined the tax is “far too low to make a meaningful difference in rates of tobacco use, especially among children.” The bill also cuts certain taxes on other types of tobacco products, TTCP notes.
TMA and others are encouraging the legislature to take a stronger stand against e-cigarette use with a larger tax.
Move or die: Key House deadline Thursday
Come this Friday, lawmakers, lobbyists, and other avid followers of the legislature’s work will – for better and worse – have significantly less to worry about. That’s because the House has a crucial deadline coming up on Thursday night at midnight. Any measure that hasn’t passed the House on second reading (out of the three required before a bill finally passes) will have met the end of its road.