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Subcommittee considers bill to create statewide health-care professional data system
Summary
Senate Bill 131 would direct the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce to compile a searchable, statewide inventory of licensed health-care professionals by non-personal attributes to help planners and consumers identify coverage gaps; committee discussion focused on which identifiers would be public and how to deduplicate multi‑site providers.
Senate Bill 131, sponsored in the hearing by Senator Hodges, would require the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce to assemble a statewide, searchable data system listing licensed health-care professionals by non-personal attributes, supporters told the Occupation and Professional Licenses Subcommittee.
The bill would amend Chapter 10 of Title 49 to create a new code section, 49-10-8, directing the board to collect and publish provider lists showing demographic and practice characteristics such as age, language proficiency, gender, ethnicity, location of practice and license type, Senator Hodges said. "This bill is pretty simple. It establish establishes health care professional, data system across the state," Hodges said during her presentation.
The measure identifies 28 types of licensed professionals and 15 licensing boards that would collaborate with the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce to supply the information, according to remarks in the hearing. The bill, Hodges added, "authorizes the board to seek federal or other sources of funding... to help pay for creating and maintaining this list." Committee members and the board's executive director said the system is intended to help state planners identify potential "health care deserts" and let consumers locate nearby providers.
Chet Bassin, executive director of the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce, described the board's existing data work and capacity to run the system. "We are administratively attached to DCH," Bassin said, and noted the board administers “just under $200,000,000 a year in loan repayment programs” and performs statewide supply-and-distribution studies using licensing exam data that are publicly accessible.
Committee discussion clarified what information would be public and what would be used internally to ensure data quality. Hodges said the bill "very important, there is no personal information listed," and Bassin told the committee there would be "no names" published as part of the public-facing dataset. Committee members asked about deduplicating providers who practice in multiple towns; a staff suggestion and Bassin's response proposed using a unique backend identifier (for example, a state-issued licensing number) to link multiple practice locations to a single provider so the public list does not double-count an individual practicing in more than one place.
There was no recorded roll-call vote in the provided transcript for SB 131. A motion to report the bill was made, but the transcript does not include a final tally or explicit recorded outcome for the subcommittee on this bill.
The subcommittee did not receive additional outside testimony on SB 131 during the recorded portion of the hearing.
If advanced as written, the bill would create a tool aimed at helping health planners and consumers assess supply and distribution of licensed practitioners across Georgia and would authorize the board to pursue outside funding to develop and maintain the system.
