Earlier today SB 208 passed the Indiana Senate by a vote of 39 to 9. In order to crossover to the House, the bill had to pass the upper chamber by today, and thanks to your advocacy it happened!
The next hurdle is getting SB 208 through the House. There will likely be a committee hearing, but the details are not yet known. In the meantime here is how you can help:
Contact your Indiana State House Member.
Use this link to find your representative’s contact information: https://iga.in.gov/legislative/find-legislators/
Email and call your member to give them a simple message: Vote YES on SB 208. A YES on SB 208 is a vote to let patients keep their doctors.
More information and talking points can be found in our earlier alert on this bill, copied below.
P.S. If you missed last week’s committee hearing on SB 208, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/1leSPM0cHU8
January 21, 2018
Dear AAPS Members and Friends:
Legislation to stop MOC abuse has been introduced in the Indiana Senate!
Please stand with your colleagues and patients in support of Indiana SB 208. It aims to help Indiana physicians focus more on their patients and less on meaningless busywork by stating that Maintenance of Certification (MOC) participation cannot be required for licensure, insurance reimbursement, or hospital privileges. As introduced, this is one of the strongest anti-MOC bills we’ve seen yet!
MOC requirements do not benefit patient care and must not block physicians from doing their job.
Educate your legislators! Here is a suggestion for what you might say:
Please support SB 208. I am a physician practicing in Indiana and MOC requirements are unfairly taking resources away from patient care without an increase in quality. MOC is an ineffective criterion for judging physician quality. SB 208 would not impair a hospital’s ability to select physicians who have met the rigorous demands needed to achieve initial board certification. In addition, hospitals receive billions of dollars of taxpayer funds every year. The Indiana legislature has a responsibility to ensure that requirements imposed on the hospital workforce are not increasing costs without any benefit to patient care and that patients retain the ability to work with the physicians of their choice. Let patients keep their doctors.
Sincerely,
Contacting them delivers a strong message to the legislators—they need to know you are watching the process.
AAPS is writing the committee members. You can see a draft of our letter here: https://goo.gl/pekSG6
Our friends at the Practicing Physicians of America have prepared a helpful fact sheet in support of similar bills: http://www.medtees.com/content/ABMSFactSheet.pdf.
Thank you for your help and please stay tuned for future updates.
~AAPS