California Senate OKs Bills That Would Affect State Medical Board
Last week, the state Senate approved several bills that would affect the Medical Board of California, the Sacramento Business Journal reports (Robertson, Sacramento Business Journal, 6/4).
Details of Bills
The bills include:
- SB 62, by Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles), which would require coroners to report any prescription drug-related deaths to the board (California Healthline, 4/29);
- SB 304, by Price and Assembly member Richard Gordon (D-Menlo Park), which would move the board's authority to investigate physician misconduct to the Office of the Attorney General (California Healthline, 4/26);
- SB 670, by Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), which would ease the board's efforts to investigate doctors suspected of overprescribing and to suspend their prescribing authority; and
- SB 809, by Steinberg and Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), which would require state health providers to pay a 1.2% premium on their annual licensing fees, providing a total of $9 million annually to upgrade and maintain the state's Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (California Healthline, 4/29).