Legislative Agenda

Below are the Texas Osteopathic Medical Association's priorities for the 2023 legislative session.

ACCESS TO CARE 

• Increase funding and expand Graduate Medical Education.
• Increase and expand funding the Texas Physician Education Loan Repayment Program.
• Protect Health Care Funding for Low-Income Women.
• Support the appropriate expansion of licensing, credentialing, and payment for patient-centered Telemedicine efforts which augment care and does not diminish current standards of care.

MANAGED CARE REFORMS 

• Recognize the accumulative health care costs to the state: Physician and patient of corporate and bureaucratic ‘requirements’ and practices imposed paperwork, hassles, and intrusions into patient care by nonessential tasks such as pre- and post-authorizations, hours spent haggling over payment, and fighting with insurance company clerks about the appropriate treatment for a patient.

PATIENT SAFETY AND PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY 

• Continue to defend the 2003 medical liability reforms.
• Protect the safety of health care to patients by ensuring those who provide health care services provide those services for which they are educated and trained to keep patients safe by upholding a single standard of care overseen by the Texas Medical Board.

STATE HEALTH SERVICE PROVIDERS 

• Medicaid funding should include provisions for physician reimbursement that reflects costs of providing medical care to program recipients; reduce administrative burdens, improve methods to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.
• Continue to strengthen the Texas Women’s Health Program.
• Texas Medical Board: Continue to work for an adequately funded, strong and fair Texas Medical Board with due process protections for physicians under investigation.
• Workers' Compensation: Monitor the Workers' Compensation program in the Dept. of Insurance and work to ensure a fair and viable program for both injured workers and the doctors that care for them

PUBLIC HEALTH

• Continue to improve Immunization Tracking.
• Tackle the childhood and adult obesity epidemic.
• Community-based programs to ensure children have safe neighborhoods and access to healthy food.
• Enhance Disease Research, Detection, and Prevention.
• Improve access to mental health care services.
• Support efforts to encouraging schools to increase availability of epinephrine pens.
• Investing in a robust primary and subspecialty physician network as well as evidence-based preventive health services.
• Increase funding to strengthen Texas Public Health Services.

DO REPRESENTATION on health-related boards, commissions and committees.