Good Medicine & Bad
The governor expanded the special session subjects. Again.
This time he added bills for telemedicine and a multi-state nurse licensing compact. The first one makes good sense. I was disappointed when the governor prematurely ended the emergency declaration in April, cutting Alaskans off from telehealth and raising the strain on in-state providers. With a bill, we can make more telemedicine available—pandemic or no.
Then there’s the multi-state nursing compact. The Senate Health & Social Services committee had four hearings on it during the regular session and voted 3-2 to kill it. (The three were bipartisan.) Trying to use COVID to resurrect the bill seems a little sketchy to me.
As I understand it, in the name of streamlining, the compact trades having Alaska license our nurses for folks in Chicago. If we sign on, we wouldn’t know which of the licensed nurses are actually working in state, and wouldn’t be able to keep any state-specific rules. Alaska also couldn’t collect fees for licensing, which is how we pay to regulate the profession and drum out the rare bad actor. It's certainly not a change we can vet in the next twelve days.
And changing how we license nurses isn't going to unlock a trunkful of well-rested pros to come staff the ventilators at Alaska hospitals. Nurses across the country have been burning the candle at both ends for 20 months of medical practice during the pandemic. There aren't many looking to light the middle, too, by uprooting homes and families to do the same work here.
I'd be remiss not to point out: the governor could open up access to telemedicine and loosen licensing rules for any providers we can entice to the state tomorrow. He'd just need to issue a disaster declaration. Our hospitals, health care pros, and nursing homes have been begging for one as COVID rates climb and they need every possible tool to save lives.
