Advocacy Successes
Physician Advocacy Successes
Good health policy is made with physicians in the discussion.
MSDC, working with its members, partners, and other organizations, has won major policy victories to help its members practice medicine. Below is a sampling of those victories. Do you want to be a vital part of the next policy victory helping improve the health of the District? Contact us today.
Opioid Policy
- MSDC was added to the opioid fund oversight panel by the Council in its legislation authorizing the oversight body
Scope of Practice
- MSDC supported legislation to ban the sale of flavored electronic smoking devices and restrict the sale of electronic smoking devices.
- Working with a coalition, MSDC added funding to the DC budget to support the hiring of more license specialists to help with the delay in processing medical licenses.
Women's Health
- B24-143, to regulate certified midwives, passed the Council with MSDC's support
Health Equity
- Mayor Muriel Bowser signs into law the Electronic Medical Order for Scope of Treatment Registry Amendment Act of 2019. The eMOST Registry Amendment Act permits the creation of an electronic database of advanced directive wishes for District residents that can be tied into the health information exchange.
- Mayor Bowser signs into law the School Sunscreen Safety Temporary Amendment Act of 2019. The bill permits students to bring and apply sunscreen during the 2019-2020 school year.
- MSDC comments on the importance of funding United Medical Center (UMC) and health facilities in Wards 7 and 8 in the mayor's budget. Those comments are used almost verbatim in CM Trayon White's comments advocating for funding of United Medical Center.
Scope of Practice
- DC Health publishes draft regulations removing the 3 mandatory CME hours for HIV/AIDS awareness and replaces them with a requirement to fulfill 10% of mandatory CME hours with a topic from a public health priority list. DC Health then waived the requirement for 2020.
- The Strengthening Reproductive Health Protections Act of 2020 is signed into law with MSDC support. The bill prohibits government interference in reproductive decisions between a patient and doctor, and prohibits employers from penalizing physicians for practicing reproductive medicine outside of their work hours.
- The Mayor's Commission on Healthcare Systems Transformation releases its final recommendations. One recommendation is for the District to explore options to make providing health care more affordable, including financial relief for higher malpractice insurance rates.
- The Council removes "telephone" from the list of prohibited types of telemedicine to allow physicians and other providers to be reimbursed for telephone telemedicine appointments after MSDC and health community advocacy.
- MSDC worked with the Council to modify onerous language in the Health Care Reporting Amendment Act that potentially would have penalized physicians from seeking help for substance abuse or addiction issues.
Opioid/Drug Policy
- The Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) waives prior authorization for key medication assisted treatments (MAT) treating substance use disorder patients in Medicaid.
- The Mayor signed into law The Access to Biosimilars Amendment Act of 2019, a top MSDC priority as it would help prescribers to prescribe more cost-effective drugs for patients.
Behavioral Health
- The Behavioral Health Parity Act of 2017, a major priority for MSDC and DCPA, officially becomes law. The legislation requires all health benefit plans offered by an insurance carrier to meet the federal requirements of the Wellstone/Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.
Health Equity
- The District Council passes B22-1001, The Health Insurance Marketplace Improvement Amendment Act of 2018. The bill prohibits the sale of Short Term, Limited Duration health plans and Association Health Plans (AHPs) in the DC Health Benefits Exchange.
Scope of Practice
- DC joins 28 other states in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact with B22-177 becoming law. The IMLC is designed to ease physician licensure in multiple states.
Women's Health
- The Maternal Mortality Review Committee is established by law. The Committee is responsible for finding solutions to maternal health crisis in the District. District physicians are an important part of this vital committee.
- B22-106, The Defending Access to Women's Health Care Services Amendment Act, becomes law. The act requires insurers to cover health care services like breast cancer screening and STI screenings without cost-sharing.
Opioid Policy
- Right before the Council adjourned for the session, it passed B21-32, the Specialty Drug Copayment Limitation Act. The bill limits cost shifting by payers for prescription drugs.
Behavioral Health
- B21-0007 passes the Council. The Behavioral Health Coordination of Care Amendment Act of 2016 permitted the disclosing of mental health information between a mental health facility and the health professional caring for the patient.
Women's Health
- MSDC was proud to have worked on B21-20. The law requires payers to cover up to 12 months of prescription contraception, advancing women's health and equality.
MSDC President to Council = Get License Reciprocity Done
MSDC President Dr. Susanne Bathgate told the DC Committee on Health today that regional medical license reciprocity needs to get done on time - or the Council should step in to make it happen.
Why now: The comments were part of Dr. Bathgate's testimony before the committee during its oversight hearing on the medical licensing boards.
Status: The Board of Medicine has publicly stated it has a goal of launching DC/Maryland/Virginia medical license reciprocity by this summer. This comes after years of pressure by the Medical Society for DC and its neighbors to create a process where a physician in good standing in one state can more quickly be licensed in the other two.
The three states all had provisions in statute to permit this, but the implementation and coordination was lacking.
In her testimony, Dr. Bathgate spelled out the importance of this issue and told the Council it had a role to ensuring DC Health implemented this on time. Her entire testimony is below.
The big picture: Post-2020, telemedicine and regional patient populations are not going away. Allowing quicker licensing for area physicians saves time, money, and stress for the regional healthcare system.
What else? Dr. Bathgate also testified on:
- Changing harmful language on license applications dealing with wellness and addiction treatment
- Adding customer service staff to licensing boards
- Removing the LGBTQ cultural competency CME requirement
February 28, 2023
Councilmember Christina Henderson
Chair, Committee on Health
1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20004
Dear Chair Henderson,
The Medical Society of the District of Columbia (MSDC) is the largest medical organization representing metropolitan Washington physicians in the District. We advocate on behalf of all 11,000 plus licensed physicians in the District and seek to make the District “the best place to practice medicine”.
I thank you for holding this hearing for oversight of the various health licensing baords. I want to begin by saying that the Board of Medicine, which we work closest with, is responsive to the Medical Society and our members. We have partnered on various issues throughout the year – most recently the 2022 medical license renewal – and valued our working relationship.
We especially appreciate the respect given by the Board to our Physician Health Committee, which advocates for and supports physicians dealing with addiction. We know post-2020 that physician addiction and suicide is on the rise, and the Committee is available to provide additional support to the Board. However, an increase in referrals and expert assistance cannot be accommodated without a corresponding grant or funding source within the department.
MSDC is concerned about the following and encourages the committee to consider them during the budget process:
1. Change harmful language around wellness and addiction. The Mayor’s Healthcare Workforce Task Force included a recommendation in its draft report to limit, “‘fitness for duty’ questions during application and renewal cycles” such that they only apply to current impairment to practice safely. The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation has identified the District as one of the states who licensure language can harm physician wellness by forcing unnecessary disclosure of past impairment and wellness treatment. We urge the Board of Medicine and, if necessary, the Council, to remove this offending language.
2. Implement regional license reciprocity as soon as possible. The Board of Medicine has shared regional reciprocity should be online in the summer of 2023. The Council must keep the Boards to this timeline and ensure the DMV license reciprocity process is fully operational, including IT Infrastructure. MSDC has long championed the need for area physicians licensed in one state to easily apply for a license in the other without totally redoing their applications. We also firmly believe a regional license should be less expensive than going through the regular license.
3. Staff up customer service support. During license renewal times, MSDC stands up its own license renewal center and takes calls and emails from members helping the through the process. We even arrange office hours for members to come in and sit down to complete their applications with us. We did this not only as a service but because it is hard to call and get answers to questions about licensing and relicensing. The DC government should look at how it funds customer support personnel for the boards.
4. Work with Council to remove the LGBTQ cultural competency CME requirement. MSDC and its members believe that content-specific mandated CME is wrong, as government through the licensing process should not dictate what learning is essential to the practice of medicine. The mandatory two hours of LGBTQ cultural competency remains a requirement due to Council legislation. We urge the Council to repeal the requirement, not because we oppose LGBTQ cultural competency education, but because it is another mandate for all physicians regardless of practice type.
Please reach out to the MSDC office if our membership can be of assistance on these or any issue. We look forward to working with you and the Committee to make the District the best place to practice medicine.
Sincerely,
Susanne Bathgate, MD
President, Medical Society of DC