February 8, 2001

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Stanley S. Jones, Jr.

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         Thursday, the Legislature heard Governor Barnes deliver his State-of-the-State address.  The Governor spoke for about forty minutes to the Joint Session. 

Floor Activity 

          In the House, Rep. Larry Walker read for the third time his bill creating the Patient’s Right to Know Act, HB 156.  HB 156 caused a great deal of commotion as some Republicans were greatly interested in attaching to Rep. Walker’s bill language from HB 244, the Woman’s Right to Know Act.  HB 156 creates a physician profiling system to be maintained by the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners.  Each profile would contain information about the physician’s background – education, specialty, hospital privileges, revocation of hospital privileges, malpractice judgments, settlements, etc.  If a physician’s data changed, then he or she would have to update the Board within 30 days and then the Board would verify that within 15 days.  In addition, a person would be able to access this profile on the Internet.  A person could also inquire about any routine office and surgical/procedure costs.  If the person had a complaint about a physician, his or her office staff, etc., then such complaint could be made to the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners.  

          Amendments were offered by Rep. Joyce, Rep. Bohannon, Rep. Mueller, and others in an effort to add language from the Woman’s Right to Know bill – which would require that before a woman obtained an abortion procedure, she be informed about the risks involved.  Arguments were made that this might convince a woman not to get such procedure if she knew all the risks.  The Speaker ruled these amendments as not germane. 

          Another amendment offered which was ruled out of order by the Speaker was by Rep. Broome to require that physicians report in their profile any court-ordered drug or alcohol treatment.  Rep. Walker tried to convince Speaker Murphy that this amendment was a good amendment.  Needless to say, the “Chair” did not like it and ruled it out of order. 

          One amendment did make it onto the bill.  Rep. Franklin added that physicians must report the number of abortion procedures they had performed within the last ten years.  Rep. Walker did not oppose this amendment. 

          There were a number of passionate speeches about this bill.  Rep. Joyce even went to the Well to appeal the Speaker’s ruling on his amendment based on Rule 26.  He claimed that he did not take his right to appeal the Speaker lightly and did not want to argue with the Chair.  Rep. Walker reminded Rep. Joyce that Rule 110 clearly stated what subject matters could be contained in one bill and adding HB 244 language would create more than one subject matter.  There was a vote on whether to add Rep. Joyce’s amendment and it lost by a vote of 26 yeas to 142 nays.  

          Rep. Broome’s amendment was adopted and the bill passed by Committee Substitute (from the House Judiciary Committee), by  a vote of 156 yeas to zero. 

Committee Activity 

          Rep. Nan Orrock’s credentialing bill made it out of the House Health and Ecology Committee’s Subcommittee on Health Professions.  HB 356 was amended and will now proceed to the full Committee for a vote.  In the amendments offered, the concerns of Grady Memorial Hospital were addressed – whereby Grady would not be responsible for the costs of credentialing its physicians.  Grady gets its doctors via contracts from Emory and Morehouse Schools of Medicine.  There was a lot of opposition to the bill – the hospitals are opposed to the legislation as it would require them to pay for the data collected by the centralized credentialing entity.  Arguments included the fact that the hospitals and health plans could not go back to the physicians to ask for additional information on the core data.  Also, the credentialing entity was not actually verifying the data it was collecting.  Thus, the hospitals and health plans believe that they are still at risk to verify the data.  The vote was 6 to 2 on the measure. 

          Sen. Nadine Thomas held an hour-long hearing on the FY 2001 Budget.  There were several groups asking for help with the Supplemental Budget.  Again the hospitals plead their case for additional dollars in the Supplemental Budget.  Also, there were representatives from Morehouse School of Medicine on the numbers of residencies that the State would support.  Sen. Thomas asked for additional information on the residency programs from both the State as well as Emory University School of Medicine in an effort to determine exactly which programs were getting residents.  The Elaine Clark Center in DeKalb County also asked for money in the FY 2001 Budget as it claimed that it could not continue without State assistance.