Medical students meet with a legislative
put forth by the Federation of State Medical Boards, it is in full operation, and Texas can join at any time. On the telemedicine front, the legislature also closed the door on an op- portunity for physicians to get paid fairly for after-hours phone or telemedical consults. TMA-backed House Bill 2348 by Rep. Four Price (R-Amarillo) would have required health plans to pay local doctors the same as they would if hiring outside telemedicine vendors for those services. As a handful of other telemedicine bills worked their way through legislative committees, TMA sounded the alarm bells on attempts like House Bill 2172 by Representative Smithee to skirt current medical board regulations and permit physicians to diagnose over the telephone without an initial face-to-face visit to establish a patient-physician relationship. The bill failed. Left standing, however, were three TMA-supported telemedicine bills:
• House Bill 1878 by Rep. Jodie Laudenberg (R-Parker) requires Medicaid pay- ment for telemedicine services provided in school-based settings;
• House Bill 3519 by Rep. Bobby Guerra (D-Mission) allows Medicaid payment for home telemonitoring of patients with two or more specific medical condi- tions and a history of frequent hospital admissions and emergency visits; and
• Provisions originally in House Bill 2004 by Representative Darby to pilot-test emergency telemedical consults in rural counties with a population of 50,000 or less ended up in House Bill 479 by Rep. Cecil Bell (R-Magnolia).
TMA, meanwhile, won additional liability protections for physicians sharing
electronic health records through health information exchanges, while defend- ing against potential erosions to state tort reforms, confidentiality of TMB com- plaints, and protections under the Texas Advance Directives Act. Amid the heated end-of-life care debates that also tend to surface each session, TMA negotiated a compromise under House Bill 3074 by Rep. Drew
40 TEXAS MEDICINE August 2015
aide to discuss graduate medical education funding, a top priority and accomplishment for TMA this session.
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