2024 Oklahoma Psychological Association Legislative Strategies

2024 OPA LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES

2023-2024 Legislative Strategies

OPA’s legislative strategies for the 59^th Legislative Session are described below with white papers providing further details.

 

Priority 1 – Cross the Finish line. OPA has two bills that have passed the House of Representatives. We now need to get them through the current Senate committee, pass by a full Senate vote, and signed into law by the Governor.

1)    House Bill 2163 (Roe) – Bill that would encourage private health insurance companies to reimburse psychologists for services provided by postdoctoral psychology residents and predoctoral psychology interns under the direct supervision of a licensed psychologist (a common practice in nearly all other medical health fields).  The Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner’s office is supportive of this effort.

 

2)    House Bill 1345 (Banning/Waldron) – Requested by Oklahoma State Board of Examiners of Psychology (OSBEP) and carried by OPA. This bill focuses on licensure reciprocity with the State of Texas. Passing this bill will increase the work force in both Oklahoma and Texas, improve opportunities for psychologists living near the borders of Oklahoma and Texas, and open the door for additional reciprocity agreements with other neighboring states.

OPA has made great progress in moving these 2 bills through the legislative process. However, we now face the challenge of getting them through the Senate committee and moving on to a vote on the Senate floor. We believe both bills will pass and be signed by the Governor once the full Senate gets a chance to vote on them.   

Priority 2 – Prescription Privileges for Psychologists. OPA now has a bill, HB 2997 (Randleman) which is a refined version of language from SB 403 (Pemberton) filed in 2023 which did not advance during the first 59^th legislative session. As predicted, we are meeting several challenges with this pursuit, but it will not stop us from moving forward. Several of our sister states have been able to clear this hurdle and now have prescribing privileges for Licensed Psychologists. 

 

Our current focus is on:

• ·       Educate legislators on why prescriptive authority is a priority for psychologists utilizing the second year of 59^th legislative session and HB 2997
• ·       Complete an interim study within a legislative body
• ·       Continue to shore up support and reach out to potential co-authors for the legislation
• ·       Work with local University programs to build in a training program 

Priority 3 – Health Information Exchange (HIE)  

1)      Pursue the removal of any mandates from the current HIE law or repeal of the law, all together. 

2)      Educate all legislators, in both the Oklahoma House and Senate, on the real dangers of the HIE mandates to the public and the impact of mental health services in the state.

3)      Assist OPA membership in understanding and working issues surrounding the HIE law and ongoing changes being made by the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA).

4)      Continue to monitor and address HIE concerns at both the policy/rules and legislative level, gather information from membership on current interactions (exemptions), and make sure our membership understands our goal is the removal of all HIE mandates in the State of Oklahoma. (As stated in #1 of this section.)