April 2023 Legislative Update

Legislative Update

This year’s opening session was kicked off by the Residents Annual visit to the State Capitol to learn about the legislative process at the state level.

Dr. Charles Williams and his beautiful wife Pat welcomed the group to Tallahassee.  Dr. Williams did an amazing job communicating to them the importance and benefits to them personally and professionally in being involved in FRS.

President Desai and this year’s residents, Dr. Sofia Vianna (Mt Sinai), Dr Andrew Dakkak (Advent Health Orlando), and Dr. Cameron Overfield (Mayo Clinic) had an opportunity to meet and lobby many members on the tort reform bill that was flying through the House and Senate. The bill passed and was signed into law by the Governor on 3/24/23. The doctors were caught between the insurance companies and the trial attorneys regarding payment as relates to patients who were in the midst of a suit due to the injury they sustained.

SB 614 by Senator Harrell and companion bill HB 1059 by Representative Cassello removing the sunset date from current law relating to the dense breast reporting lay letter has been amended in both bills.  The sunset date is now 9/10/2024 which is when the FDA- MQSA lay letters will be required. The Senate bill is in the House in messages and the bill still has to pass the House to make it to the Governor’s desk.

Senator Harrell and Representative “Dr” Massulo (dermatologist) have bills SB 230/ HB 583 that relate to health care practitioners’ titles and abbreviations. The Senate bill is in messages to the House and the House bill is making its way through the committee process. This is a priority bill for Senate President Passidomo.

HB 1145 by Representative Snyder relates to foreign trained doctors. The bill provides alternative to approved residency requirement for foreign trained physicians. The companion measure is SB 956 by Senator Garcia. These bills are moving through the process and have been proposed to increase the number of physicians in the state. The devil is in the details but the sponsors are willing to work with us and the FMA on the bill language.

We are about halfway through the Session and the House and Senate budgets have been released. They are taking a small break to celebrate Easter and Passover and the budget negotiations will start in earnest after the break. The two bodies are only $700 million apart; so, no overtime is being anticipated.

There’s also proposed funding in the budget to increase funding for residency as another effort to add more physicians in the state.

Please contact me if you have any questions relating to the legislative session.

Alison Dudley
Lobbyist, FRS
alisondudley@dudleyandassociates.com