Not official, AB 890 likely heard in committee on July 13th. Act now. CPA’s letter is in. CMA and the opposition coalition have issued an alert. See and act on it here. But. Important you focus on this Committee: The Senate and Business and Professions Committee. See below for how.

Back to business. Advocacy fundamentals: contacting individual committee members generally isn’t useful unless by constituents. Constituents contacting their members on the committee is the most effective. See Committee page here for contacts.  Non-constituents can use the committee page to message Chief Consultant Sara Mason, and the Committee Chair, Senator Steve Glazer. Registration will be necessary for individuals who haven’t signed up already. It’ll take two minutes. Your letter should be ready to upload before you use the portal. See below.

Background. AB 890 authorizes a nurse practitioner to provide medical services without physician supervision if the NP works in an integrated or organized health setting or the NP meets specified education requirements and completes a 3-year transition to practice program.

Talking points. Choose one or two to focus on in your communication:

1)    Nurse practitioners are valued and essential part of care teams

2)    80% of NPs are family practice trained, receive little or no psychiatric training

3)    Unsupervised practice of these NPs with regards to psychotropic medications is unsafe, even in integrated care settings

4)    Prescribing psychiatric medications is complex; it takes years of training, differential diagnosis covering dozens if not several hundred physical conditions, is critical

5)    Conflation of physical conditions and mental disorders leads to misdiagnosis, delays in treatment, medication errors, neglect of underlying conditions

6)    This will be expensive

7)    One in four adults and one in five children receive psychiatric medications regularly, often in primary care settings – primary care NPs without Psych training prescribing psychiatric medications is a prescription for disaster

8)    There are safer ways to attempt to increase access to care. Contact randall-hagar@calpsych.org for details on the CPA Access to Care Initiative.

9)    AB 890 doesn’t produce new mental health professionals, it doesn’t increase psychiatric capacity in primary care, not does it guarantee placements in underserved areas.