FLAA has been working diligently on behalf of our members regarding two bills that were introduced for this legislative session in Florida. These bills are SB 230 and HB 583 that deal with healthcare practitioner titles. The bills were introduced by a physician group and look to limit the use of the term “doctor” across many different allied health professions. The rationale given for their introduction is patient safety even though a law already exists in Florida with penalties for misrepresenting credentials (Title XXXII, Chapter 456.072 – see link below).
Unfortunately, several bills like these have been introduced and passed into law in other states even though they are redundant. FLAA’s lobbyist alerted us to these bills and has been aggressively working on our behalf, in conjunction with the other health professions impacted, to try to stop their progression. We have also been successful in having the senate bill language amended to make it more favorable for us and are now working with the house to do the same in the event these bills do pass.
We wanted to alert our membership of these developments and our efforts on your behalf. Please see the original senate bill introduced below, and the strike all amendment we were successful in implementing to make the language more in line with how the current law reads. In the end, the amended language in the senate would not change the way we are currently required to identify ourselves when working with patients or in our advertising.
Original language of SB 230 (less favorable to audiology): https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/230/BillText/Filed/HTML
Amended language of SB 230 (more favorable to audiology): https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/230/BillText/c1/HTML
The Florida 2023 legislation session runs from March 7 through May 5, 2023. Please stay tuned for more alerts on how you can help with this and other pertinent legislative items. If you want to be part of the process in Tallahassee, please consider signing up for one of our FLAA Lobbying Days on the Hill being held every Wednesday during session. See link below for available dates and times.
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0d4ba9af22a0f8c43-lobbying#/