Joint Committee on Public Health
The Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA), on behalf of its member hospitals, health systems, physician organizations, and allied healthcare providers, appreciates this opportunity to offer testimony regarding bills dealing with maternal health, pharmacy issues, and the prescription monitoring program.
MHA supports HB1931 and urges the committee to consider the important goal of this bill, which is to ensure that during a local, state, or nationally declared emergency, patients are able to have timely access to necessary medications. Currently, the Department of Public Health is required to issue a statewide notice every time there is a declared emergency. Because of administrative burdens associated with this process, the issuance of such notices can be delayed and can impede access to necessary medications for patients and healthcare professionals. Despite such time-consuming reviews, there has never been a circumstance when such a declaration was not ultimately approved. In order to best assist the state in streamlining its decision-making process during emergencies, MHA urges the committee to consider the importance of HB1931 from a public health planning perspective and the need to expedite the safe delivery of medications to patients. We respectfully urge the committee to advance this bill once again, similar to actions taken during previous legislative sessions.
MHA supports the intent of HB1949/SB1334 to reduce racial disparities in maternal health. In the FY20 budget, the Health Policy Commission was directed to engage in a two-year pilot program in consultation with the Department of Public Health and the Betsy Lehman Center to reduce pregnancy-related deaths and improve pregnancy outcomes. The Commission is to utilize evidence-based practices from successful programs implemented nationally and internationally in the development of the program. The pilot will be collect data to gauge the success of the program in decreasing pregnancy-related deaths and track trends within the patient population, including variance by age, race and co-morbidities. MHA member hospitals will be participating as implementation sites for the pilot program.
MHA has worked for several years in conjunction with the executive branch, legislature, and other provider organizations to ensure that the Massachusetts Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) is an important, useful tool in combatting the opioid overdose crisis. HB1936 directs the PMP to require any person prescribing Schedule II through Schedule V drugs to submit a daily report of the issuance of the drug to the PMP to enable doctors, pharmacies, walk-in clinics, practitioners and patients to track any such drug from the point of prescription to consumption. While we appreciate the intent of HB1936, any subsequent data created by this additional administrative burden on providers would not prove useful in reducing unnecessary prescriptions. As such, MHA opposes this legislation.
MHA also opposes SB2298. MHA and its member hospitals have been working diligently to implement the provisions of Chapter 208 of the Acts of 2018 that require all prescriptions, with limited exceptions, to be prescribed electronically. SB2298 would reverse what would be significant advancement in prescription security by prohibiting Schedule III though VI controlled substances from being dispensed without a written or oral prescription.
MHA has significant concerns with HB1967 as it would require emergency department staff to question patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) about whether they are on probation, and whether they are required to take court-mandated tests as a condition of their probation and submit these test results to the probation department. Such procedures attach stigma to patients with OUD and can discourage them from seeking care, and MHA and our member hospitals do not believe we should create any additional barriers to treatment for patients affected by this epidemic.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony on this matter. If you have any questions regarding this testimony, or require further information, please contact Michael Sroczynski, MHA's Senior Vice President of Government Advocacy at (781) 262-6055 or
msroczynski@mhalink.org