2012 Legislative Alerts

HB 830: On March 28, 2012 the House Committee on Health and Welfare will hear HB 830. Please help us in expressing our opposition to this bill early in the session.

HB 830, by Rep. Simon. This bill revises the Mental Health Counselors Licensing Act (R.S. 37:1103).

This bill would allow licensed professional counselors to treat "severe" mental illness as long as he/she "collaborates with a practitioner licensed by LSBME or a comparable state licensing authority". Basically, this means Nurse Practitioners. This bill would also remove the requirement for ongoing consultation and collaboration with that practitioner.

This bill is a narrower version of the bill that will attempt to remove the collaborative agreement between NPs and MDs, but we need to make sure we focus on this bill and kill it for its own lack of merit.

POINTS:
1) This bill describes a very loose oversight by a nurse practitioner, who is already less qualified than a physician, over a licensed professional counselor, who is even less qualified to treat major psychiatric illness;
2) The definition of "severe mental illness" will be revised to include moderate depression (the law now only includes "severe" depression);
3) Patients who see MDs and NPs today can, and do, already benefit from collaboration between these providers and licensed counselors. The only thing this bill does is eliminate the requirement that a physician be involved in the treatment of severe mental illness.
4) This will not appreciably improve access for patients with mental illness. The barriers for treatment are many, including poor or non-reimbursement by insurance companies, lack of intensive outpatient or inpatient mental health facilities, and poor monitoring of compliance. This bill does not address any of these problems.