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Committee reviews S.28 strike‑all: consolidates professional rules, narrows advertising standard, tightens fetal‑death record confidentiality
Summary
The Senate Committee on Health & Welfare on [date not specified] reviewed a strike‑all amendment to S.28 that would consolidate professional regulation language into the Office of Professional Regulation, narrow the advertising standard, add a public‑records exemption for certain licensee contact information, and expand confidentiality for fetal‑death reports.
The Senate Committee on Health & Welfare on [date not specified] reviewed a strike‑all amendment to S.28 that would consolidate provisions governing regulated professions in the Office of Professional Regulation and change several privacy and professional‑conduct rules.
Jen Kirby of the Office of Legislative Council described the proposal as “a strike all amendment to s 28, which is an act relating to access to certain legally protected health care services.” She told the committee the draft moves provisions from multiple profession statutes into the OPR title, and adds a Public Records Act exemption for contact information held by licensing agencies.
The bill would exempt from public inspection and copying records held by the Office of Professional Regulation, the Board of Medical Practice or another agency that issues licenses if those records contain an applicant’s or licensee’s telephone number, email, physical or mailing address — except where the individual has indicated an address is public.
Kirby summarized changes in professional‑conduct language: the proposal removes the word “confuse” from an existing prohibition on advertising and retains a prohibition on advertising that “is intended or has a tendency to mislead or deceive the public.” It also revises delegation rules to require a delegating professional to ensure a delegate is qualified “by any combination of training, experience, education, or licensing credentials,” and clarifies that permitting one’s name or license to be used is prohibited when the licensee is “not actually in charge of, responsible for, or actively overseeing the professional services provided.”
The strike‑all also explicitly adds “counseling” to the statutory definition of health care services in affected chapters, Kirby said; several profession‑specific sections would be removed from the clean draft and their regulation folded into the consolidated OPR provisions.
On fetal‑death reporting, Kirby said S.28 would replace repeated references to “physician” with the broader phrase “licensed health care professional” where that term is defined in the relevant chapters, and would make reports submitted under that section confidential for statistical purposes. She told the committee the bill adds language that “they shall not be disclosed or discoverable in any civil, criminal, administrative, or other proceeding” and would shorten required record retention to two years based on the health department’s federal retention requirements.
Committee members asked several clarifying questions about how the delegation and “actively overseeing” standard would be applied in practice and whether the adaptive questionnaire and asynchronous prescribing language remained in the draft. Kirby said the adaptive‑use language for advanced practice registered nurses remained and noted that the Board of Medical Practice and the Office of Professional Regulation had requested the consolidated language for consistency across professions.
The committee paused to hear public testimony and planned to take up a motion on S.28 after the witnesses on primary care finished.
Ending note: The committee did not vote on S.28 at the hearing; members said they would continue to work with professional regulators and stakeholders on drafting details before seeking formal action.
