STAND. COM. REP. NO. 471

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2005

RE: S.B. No. 1239

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 1239 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PSYCHOLOGISTS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to authorize trained and supervised medical psychologists working in federally qualified health centers or other licensed health clinics located in federally designated medically underserved areas to prescribe psychotropic medications for the treatment of mental illness.

The Hawaii Psychological Association, the Hawaii Primary Care Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, Molokai Community Health Center, Hana Community Health Center, Napu'uwai Native Hawaiian Health Care System, Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services, Argosy University, Health Psychology Associates, Inc., Waimanalo Health Center, and twenty-seven individuals submitted testimony in support of this measure.

The Hawaii Medical Association, the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Oahu, the Hawaii Psychiatric Medical Association, and forty-six individuals submitted testimony in opposition. The Board of Medical Examiners, the Board of Psychology, and one individual submitted comments.

Your Committee finds that Hawaii suffers a significant shortage of available mental health care services in certain areas. As the Hawaii Primary Care Association noted, community health centers are at a distinct disadvantage when recruiting mental health professionals. They have limited resources. Their salary scales are generally not competitive with other health settings. And they tend to serve challenging patients, with multiple risk factors, in geographically isolated areas.

Psychologists with appropriate credentials have been allowed to prescribe medication to active duty personnel and their families in federal facilities and the Indian Health Service for years. These psychologists actively collaborate with primary care physicians to provide combined therapy and psychopharmacological care of native Hawaiians at seven federally qualified health centers. To date, thousands of native Hawaiians and other ethnic minorities have received the necessary combined therapy and psychopharmacological care that was solely lacking to address significant mental and behavioral health care needs.

The delivery of comprehensive, accessible, and affordable medical care may be enhanced by providing trained medical psychologists, licensed in Hawaii, with limited prescriptive authority. Appropriately trained prescribing psychologists can provide badly needed psychological and psychopharmacological treatment to the underserved populations of Hawaii. The measure is set to be repealed on July 1, 2013, which provides sufficient time to determine the impact of this authorization and gauge its effectiveness.

Upon further consideration, your Committee has amended this measure by increasing the minimum number of didactic classroom instruction for a conditional prescription certificate to five hundred hours; increasing the requisite supervised practicum to at least two years; and increasing the number of requisite patient contact hours to four hundred and fifty hours.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1239, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1239, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Housing.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

____________________________

ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair