Online Bill Registry and Public Psychiatry Loan Repayment. Two CPA sponsored bills bit the dust and were held in Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday, on the dreaded suspense file – graveyard for many bills. AB 1193 (Eggman) which would have established an online real-time psychiatric bed registry, faced obdurate and implacable opposition from the agency that would have administered it, the California Department of Public Health, citing a list of mostly unconvincing concerns. AB 2018 (Maienschein) provided loan repayment incentives for RFMs to go into public psychiatry was also held, for reasons more fiscal – the Committee analysis noted that the current level of resources dedicated to physician loan repayment cannot absorb new, additional workload related to new applications from additional practice sites. Funding was no doubt critical in both actions of the Committee. Finding new funding sources for both will commence this fall.
