ConnAPA Legislative Committee is reaching out to all PAs to gather support for legislation looking to change supervison to collaboration.
Because of the combined efforts of many PAs, we currently have a chance to change CT law from mandating that PAs be under a physician’s supervision, to a relationship of collaborating with physicians. The collaborative relationship we seek will require new grads to collaborate very closely (essentially be supervised), but then allow PAs as they gain experience to practice more autonomously.
As you know, this is not a stepping stone to independent practice, and it’s not a means of fulfilling any national agenda. ConnAPA has heard from it’s members, and is responding to increasing reports of significant barriers to our ability to care for patients. In the last five years since CT permitted a pathway for APRNs to practice independently, PAs are being perceived as being burdensome from an administrative point of view. And as new laws are being changed to include APRNs, PAs are being told they can no longer provide services that we have been educated and trained to provide.
At the capitol we have received significant opposition to our proposal, not the least of which is being spearheaded by the CT State Medical Society. CSMS is saying that patient safety will be compromised if PAs become collaborative, despite having seen no additional safety issues in the past two decades while working collaboratively with APRNs. CSMS also says that physicians themselves have not been asking for PAs to be collaborative … and that is where you can help!
There is a compromise meeting scheduled for this coming Tuesday (2/19) and to help, we need pro-PA physician input to the legislative leaders of the Public Health Committee. If we can get physician letters in support of PAs to the committee leaders, the message will be that practicing physicians actually do believe that PAs are at least as capable as APRNs, and deserve parity in collaboration.
Attached is a template letter and we ask you to personally speak with as many pro-PA physicians as you can, asking them to support collaboration. You can print letters with your doc’s info, ask for signatures, & have your staff fax them in. Or if it will be more effective, you can e-mail the letter to your docs asking them to e-mail it.
Your efforts here may very well counter-check some of the CSMS rhetoric and reduce the need for us to water down our preferred wording. Thank-you once again for the help!
Mick Devanney PA, ConnAPA President
Jason Prevelige PA, ConnAPA Legislative Chair
Dan Mussen PA, ConnAPA Legislative Member