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Senate bill would add physician assistants to Maryland statutes; psychiatrists urge excluding involuntary‑admission authority
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Summary
SB 326 would put physician assistants on par with nurse practitioners in many statutes to avoid operational delays; supporters said the bill does not change PA scope, but psychiatrists and the public defender's office urged removing sections that allow PAs to serve as second certifiers for involuntary psychiatric admissions.
Senator Clarence Lam presented SB 326 to add physician assistants to statutory provisions that already list nurse practitioners and other clinicians, arguing the change removes legal friction where PAs already practice and would cut operational delays in hospitals and corrections.
"This bill does not expand physician's assistant scope of practice or create independent practices for PAs," Lam said. "The goal is to improve continuity and operational flexibility in an otherwise already strained health care system."
Supporters — including the Maryland Academy of Physician Assistants, the Maryland Board of Physicians and hospital systems — said the bill lets PAs complete statutory tasks they already perform clinically and helps reduce emergency‑department delays, particularly where single‑physician coverage creates bottlenecks.
The central dispute concerned whether PAs should be permitted as a second certifier for involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations and certain voluntary admissions of disabled persons. Psychiatrists and the Public Defender's Office said the current standard — two physicians, or one physician plus a licensed mental‑health professional — exists because involuntary admission is a civil liberty action that requires the specific psychiatric training of the designated professionals. They urged striking the involuntary‑admission language or adding strict safeguards. Emergency‑medicine and PA advocates said PAs already do much of the clinical evaluation and excluding them as second signatories can cause long, documented delays in admission and bed assignment.
Senators asked technical and billing questions about primary‑care designation and collaborative agreements; sponsors and stakeholders agreed on many technical fixes and signaled further negotiations on involuntary‑admission language.
