Advocating for our Health Care Heroes By Mary Mayhew

◀ Continued from page 11 • Amends current law requiring written consent for all pelvic examinations performed by health care practitioners and trainees to require written consent for anesthetized or unconscious patients and to require verbal consent from any conscious patient, with exceptions; • Modifies the current exception allowing an examination to avert a serious risk of bodily impairment to simply refer to the statute on emergency services and care; • Adds three new exceptions, thereby allowing an examination without consent, related to emergency medical conditions, a child protective investigation, and certain criminal offenses against a child; and • Provides that a single written consent for a pelvic examination may authorize multiple health care practitioners or students to perform a pelvic examination on a pregnant woman having contractions.

5) “SUPPORT HEALTHCARE HEROES” LICENSE PLATE

Florida has 99 specialty license plates, but none of them honor healthcare workers. We figured there was no better time than during a pandemic to push for a specialty license plate of our own that says: “Support Healthcare Heroes.” All funds raised from this plate (est. $250K annually) will be allocated to the Florida DOH Emergency Medical Services Trust Fund, which provides financial support for EMS and is dwindling due to a steady decline in its current funding source — traffic violation tickets.

We succeeded: FCEP worked with Sen. Gayle Harrell to promote the legislative language that was included in a larger transportation bill. Many specialty license plates were introduced this Session, and as a result, most of them — including ours — were stripped from the SB 676: Specialty License Plates bill by the House on the last Monday of Session. Thankfully, our lobbyist, Toni Large, worked to get our Healthcare Heroes License Plate back into the bill on Wednesday. On Thursday, April 29, the bill authorizing seven new specialty license plates was passed and awaits Gov. DeSantis’s signature.

The work doesn’t stop there, though: At least 3,000 pre-sale vouchers must be sold within 24 months after vouchers become available in order to manufacture the plate. We are confident, however, that we can reach this threshold.

6) TEEING UP FOR 2022 SESSION: MAXIMUS AND THE INDEPENDENT DISPUTE RESOLUTION (IDR) PROCESS

FCEP sought bill sponsors for an IDR fix that would require insurers to participate in the IDR process (through MAXIMUS) this session. Unfortunately, we discovered that our simple fix is not so simple without an agency or court opinion supporting our case. We continue to make the case to AHCA & OIR, and you can help us do

that by sharing your payment dispute experiences with FCEP and ACEP.

This will be a 2022 legislative priority. We encourage our physicians to utilize the IDR / MAXIMUS process and even take an “opt out” case to court in order to clarify the law.

HELP US REACH OUR GOALS

When I first started to get involved in advocacy, a mentor explained to me that in order to get anything accomplished with politicians, you must have two resources: time and money. We use the latter to secure in-person time and events with elected officials or their staff. Please consider donating to the FCEP PAC. Without your help, we cannot be there to represent you in those Tallahassee offices. We are happy to give our time to meet with the legislators, if you give us the chance to get our feet in the door. ■