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Committee approves clarification that autism diagnosis requires two different disciplines
Summary
House Bill 1586 clarifies that an autism diagnosis requires evaluation by two distinct disciplines (for example, a physician and a psychologist), not two practitioners from the same discipline; the committee approved the change by voice vote.
Rep. Lee Johnson said the bill clarifies prior law that required multi-disciplinary confirmation of autism by two different disciplines, not by two people from the same discipline.
"We changed that law to require 2 out of 3 to diagnose autism. It's important to get that diagnosis correct, and it's important to have more than 1 set of eyes looking at people," Johnson said. He explained the need to make explicit that the two evaluations must come from different professional disciplines (physician, psychologist, speech-language pathologist) rather than two evaluations from the same specialty.
No witness opposed the clarification and no committee members registered significant disagreement. The committee passed the bill by voice vote; the transcript shows no roll-call tally.
