2007 General Assembly

Click here for a list of all bills important to emergency medicine that passed or failed in 2007 General Assembly.

VACEP's Board adopted legislative priorities for the 2007 General Assembly. These were:

• Reimbursement issues, specificallly:
  
  • Dual Endorsement - Despite intense lobbying by members and lobbyists HB 2562 failed in the House Commerce and Labor Committee. Here are the votes.
    
  • Elimination of DMAS Level III Pend Program; was introduced as a budget amendment to secure funding necessary for elimination of this program. The amendment was dropped early in the budget deliberations. See news article that predicted this outcome: Transportation woes threaten funding for healthcare.
    
  • Medicaid inflation factor for all physician services. Another budget amendment that underwent several versions ranging from no increase up to 15%. In late budget deliberations, a 2% increase was finally agreed to and becomes effective July 1, 2007. This will bring the total increase for physician services over the past two years to 5%.
    
• Preservation of the Malpractice Cap. Was anticipated to be largely an educational initiative, spearheaded by The Medical Society of Virginia which VACEP actively supported. Bills regarding non-suit and reporting requirements of the Board of Medicine were successful "tweaks" that favored physicians.
  
• Defense! A myriad of issues were introduced had some potential - either negatively or positively - to impact the practice of emergency medicine and your patients. As these were identified, the Government Affairs committee took a position and added to the bill list and legislative alerts sent to members during the General Assembly.