Committee advances bill to create statewide health-care provider directory after adding age/location fields

Senate Bill 131, agency legislation for the Georgia Board of Healthcare Workforce, would create a statewide, searchable list of licensed health-care professionals organized by practice type, language proficiency, gender and location to help planners and consumers locate providers.

The sponsor told the committee the directory would support two primary uses: health-care planners assessing geographic gaps and consumers seeking a particular type of provider. "Basically, this will be used by two types of people," the sponsor said, adding the board could also seek federal or other funding to establish and maintain the list. Chet Bassin, executive director of the Georgia Board of Healthcare Workforce, was introduced as a staff contact and answered technical questions about implementation.

Why it matters: Lawmakers said the directory could expose "health-care deserts," improve workforce planning and help Georgians find local providers. Committee members raised data-collection challenges, duplication with existing boards' databases and privacy concerns about adding age and location details.

Amendment and vote: The secretary of state's office asked the committee to add month and year of birth plus city, county and ZIP code because its records lack an explicit age field and do capture partial birth-date and locality fields. The committee adopted an amendment to add (1) month and year of birth and (2) city, county and ZIP of residence. On the amendment the committee voted by a show of hands; the transcript records seven ayes and five opposed on the amendment, which then passed. The bill as amended was advanced by voice vote.

Details and limits: Committee members pressed witnesses on whether the directory would identify whether a provider is accepting new patients or maintain practice-level granularity; the board's executive director said the proposed data set would not provide that operational detail. Several members argued the public could use age and gender filters to find providers matching personal preferences, while others warned that age data could enable discriminatory selection. The sponsor and board representatives emphasized the board's role as a data source for planning rather than a consumer-rating or appointment system.

Next steps: The bill was passed by the committee as amended; staff were asked to coordinate technical drafting on the affidavit of data fields and to confirm how the secretary of state's datafeeds would be used to populate the directory.