Virginia Senate health subcommittee advances series of bills on psychology prescribing, EMS pharmacy rules, licensing and workforce reporting

The Senate Education and Health subcommittee voted to recommend several health-related bills to the full Senate or to the Appropriations Committee after a morning of brief presentations and limited public testimony.

The measures moved forward would direct a work group to study expanded prescriptive authority for psychologists, make hospitals report counts of voluntarily reported workplace-violence incidents, create licensing pathways for dental hygienists, clarify pharmacy rules for 24-hour fire and EMS stations and require annual reporting on community health workers employed by the Virginia Department of Health and local health districts.

The matters matter to access and operations: the psychologist work group could influence how certain medications are made available during behavioral health care; the EMS and pharmacy change responds to new Drug Enforcement Administration requirements that affected how rescue squads and fire stations store controlled substances; and the community-health-worker report is intended to document workforce numbers and roles to support future budget decisions.

Senator Favola described one bill as "a section 1 bill" that would "direct the Board of Psychology and the Board of Medicine to convene a work group" to explore expanding prescriptive authority for psychologists and require the work group to report to the House and Senate health committee chairs by Nov. 1, 2025. Mariah Merage, representing the Virginia Academy of Clinical Psychologists, told the panel the study "will allow a work group to study appropriate resources and take information from experts." Trevor Moncure of the Psychiatric Society of Virginia said the society had "some pretty serious concerns" but…