06/18/2007

Update on the Prescriptive Rules Process - June 2007

Update on the Prescriptive Rules Process

The Physician Assistant Policy Committee (PAPC) has met twice since the public hearing in April. Members of the PAPC reviewed and did, or did not, modify each individual rule using suggestions from written and oral testimony given at the public hearing. The PAPC also gave careful attention to each concern raised by OAPA for which we are grateful. The PAPC has also been developing the PA formulary.

As of June 12, almost all of the rules are done and so is the formulary. The PAPC should approve the two or three remaining rules in July and send everything off to the PA Committee that will, in turn, send them to the full Medical Board for final adoption.

We hope that the Medical Board will receive the final rules in July and it is probable that they will want to consider them and will not take action until August at the earliest. Once adopted by the Medical Board the rules still need to go to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) and that will more than likely take an additional month. Once approved by JCARR the rules will be come effective several weeks later.

The rules that are being finalized for the July PAPC meeting relate to the timing of applications so that applications do not sit "incomplete" for unreasonable amounts of time. A cover page also needs to be developed for the formulary outlining a few guidelines for things like off-label prescribing.

Non-technical changes that were made to the rules that were considered at the public hearing are:

Not all physicians will have to do QA with all PAs that they might supervise. This provision allows, and does not preclude, multiple supervising physicians to assign the QA process and procedure to one supervising physician.

Special Services Plans need to contain only a description of QA and that that "peer reviewed studies" need only be provided when readily available.

The required "physician attestation" that verifies an out-of-state PA was practicing in another jurisdiction may now be satisfied by another individual (employer's representative) if the physician is unavailable.

The provisional period shall require a minimum of only 1000 hours, not 1500, and it can be completed in 6 months, not 9 months.

The requirement that the PA must write the name of the supervising physician on the prescription was eliminated.