After coming to a concession with Rep. Foti on the
grandfather clause, our bill was scheduled for a vote on the Assembly floor on
November 6th and was passed out of the house in a landslide vote of
94 to 4. Here are some other notes from
the successful passage of our bill in the Assembly.
- The
bill passed the Assembly with a vote of 94 AYES to 4 NAYS. The four individuals who voted against
Assembly Bill 256 were Reps. Grothman (West Bend – R), Krug (Milwaukee –
D), Riley (Milwaukee – D), Underheim (Oshkosh – R).
- Of
special note, Rep. Underheim voted in opposition to our bill, but did take
a somewhat reserved position on it – Ron was going to thank him for his
“efforts”. Rep. Foti also voted in
support of our bill, he felt that because we made concessions with him to
get the bill scheduled, that he should, in good faith, support our
efforts.
- The
bill was not dipped out of the Joint Finance Committee, but that should
not present that large of a problem.
It was also expedited to the Senate so the Senate will now take on
the Assembly bill in full (including amendments).
- A
successful legislative process will see the bill now being passed out of
the Senate (and Joint Finance Committee) before being sent to the
Governor’s desk for final signing into law.
Senate
In the Senate, David Malkow and myself gave testimony during
a public hearing to the Committee on Health, Utilities, Military, and Veteran’s
Affairs regarding our bill (SB-108) on October 16th. The hearing itself went very well. This was due in part to the fact that either
our lobbyist or myself was able to meet with each of the members of the
committee and address any concerns he/she may have had before the actual testimony. As you can imagine, I was quite surprised to
hear from our lobbyist the next day that Sen. Moen’s office (chair of Health
Comm.) had contacted Ron and expressed an opinion that perfusion should be
certified and not licensed. After
considerable distress on the matter, we were able to meet with Sen. Moen and
further present our argument to him that licensing would be the BEST level of
regulation of perfusion; ironically, based mainly on information he supplied
us. Although he lacked an overwhelming
acceptance of our position, Sen. Moen agreed to reevaluate the situation and to
let us know in the near future what his position would be. Fortunately, we have considerable support
from the rest of the members of the Senate Health Committee. Our lead author (Sen. Jon Erpenbach – also a
member of the Health Com.), who has been instrumental in our campaign, is
maintaining a firm position with Sen. Moen for the need of licensing
perfusion. I am remaining cautiously
optimistic that we will be able to persuade Sen. Moen for the need to license
and not certify perfusion.
The legislators were on holiday break that spanned November
8th to after the first of the year.
Not much progress was made with Sen. Moen during that time. Recent reports (01/25/020) from our lobbyist
and bill author continue to have Sen. Moen maintaining a firm position of
wanting to certify perfusion rather than license our profession. We are continuing to work with our lead
author and lobbyist to determine what information needs to be stressed to the
Senator.
As you should be able to see, Sen. Moen is now the lynch pin
for the progression of our bill in the Senate.
Shortly after the public hearing in the Senate Health Committee, Sen.
Moen requested a position statement/response from the Department of Regulation
and Licensing regarding our legislative efforts. To further understand Senator Moen’s and the DORL’s position, I
would suggest you take a moment and read the letter that Secretary Herrera
wrote to Sen. Moen regarding our legislative campaign.
Please
Link to the Following Documents:
Letter from Sec. Herrera of the
DORL regarding the Licensing of Perfusion
WPS
Response to Sec. Herrera’s Letter
Credentialing
Criteria Table Supplied by the DOR
A brief history on the DORL:
·
State agency that is responsible for issuing the
appropriate credential to regulated professions within the state of Wisconsin.
·
The Secretary of the DORL is an appointed position by
the Governor and reports to him on potential regulatory matters.
·
Sen. Moen has a very good working relationship with the
DORL. It is not surprising that they
walk away from a conversation with a similar position on a matter.
It would certainly be beneficial to our campaign to have
physicians write letters to the Senate Committee on Health, Utilities, Veterans
and Military Affairs urging them to consider the following thoughts in regards
to SB-108 Licensing of Perfusion:
·
Read the Credentialing Criteria Table that was supplied
by the DORL so you are fluent with the different levels of regulation and what
they entail.
·
Certifying perfusion could not be applied with the same
success that the state has seen with other certified professions due to the
manner in which perfusion operates in the health care system.
·
Licensing of perfusion is the only logical choice of
regulating perfusion to properly provide the public the degree of protection
that is congruent with the potential harm associated with a perfusionist’s
scope of practice.
·
Please contact me if there is a need for any other
clarification.
Senator Rod Moen
Wisconsin State
Senate
122 South, State
Capitol
PO Box 7882
Madison, WI 53707-7882
Governor’s Office
Despite our “hang-up” in the Senate, we must begin to look
beyond our current dilemma and focus the membership’s grass root
support/legislative efforts towards the state’s executive office. We must
undertake another letter writing campaign, in much the same manner as we sent
letters to our legislators, but this time to Governor McCallum’s office. I have enclosed a form letter to provide
some assistance in this task. I would
however, suggest some divergence from the standard letter to provide a certain
degree of uniqueness to your correspondence with the Governor. This creates a much more attractive letter
writing campaign on our behalf rather than having him receive 75 identical form
letters.
Please
link to this exampl:
·
Perfusionist’s letter to the Governor
It would also be very advantageous to solicit letters from
any and all individuals who may have written their legislators on our behalf
earlier in our legislative campaign.
Take a moment and bring these people involved with our “cause” up to
speed on the progress of our campaign.
Let them know how much their previous efforts were appreciated and how
they also paid dividends (letters from the MD’s carry a lot of weight with the
legislators). Then continue to thank
them for any further involvement.
We have a meeting scheduled with the Governor’s staff on the
30th of January. They have
also expressed a desire to observe surgery.
I find that to be extremely exciting.
Due primarily to the fact that many of the problems we have had
convincing legislators of the need to license perfusionists quite often lies
with their lack of a comprehensive understanding of the role we play in the
care of a patient during heart surgery.
If we can get them or anybody, in to see surgery …… I firmly believe
they will walk away from the experience in agreement with the need to license
perfusion.
Other Updates:
·
There was a nice article written in the Capital
Times on October 26th regarding our legislative efforts – a special
thanks to the St. Mary’s perfusion staff for their input.
·
Please note a correction in the January mailing
soliciting all members to write to Governor McCallum. The correct date in which AB-256 passed out of the Assembly was
November 6, 2001.
·
Our meeting with the Governor’s staff (Lisa Hardt
and Marc Dennison) was very informative for them. I am excited that they have expressed a genuine interest in
observing cardiac surgery with David Malkow and the other perfusionists at St.
Mary’s Hospital. This is an enormous
plus for our “position” to have aids this close to the Governor see first hand
the responsibilities and actions of a perfusionist during surgery.
*****
Significant Progress on the Senate Bill *****
02/04/02
·
Through Ron Hermes and Sen. Erpenbach, it is
reported (and verified) that Sen. Moen is going to have an executive vote on
the AB-256 on February 20th (they are taking up the Assembly version of the
bill) in the Health Committee with a large “companion” to that thought:
·
The big “companion” is that Sen. Moen will first
present an amendment to the committee changing the bill from a licensing bill
to a certification bill. The committee
will have to vote on the amendment before they can conduct an executive vote on
the bill.
·
Sen. Moen said he “will not lobby the other
committee members to vote for his amendment”.
At first I gave this statement little attention, but after speaking with
the other Democratic committee members, this action is unprecedented to the
manner in which Sen. Moen operates. It
is understood that if you are a democratic member and your partisan chair
introduces an amendment – you had better be voting with him or there would be
#$!! to pay. The other democratic
members of the committee went as far as to say they wanted to hear this from
Sen. Moen directly (Sens. Breske and Meyer).
Sen. Meyer did in fact run down to Moen’s office, in the middle of
meeting with us, to ascertain the certainty of what we were told – he returned
informing us that our understanding of Sen. Moen’s position is correct.
·
If the amendment is not passed (we believe we have
the necessary votes to reject it), Sen. Moen will then proceed to hold an executive
vote on the bill without the certification amendment.
·
Despite not having direct support for our bill from
Sen. Moen, we should still be appreciative for his “consideration” in the
matter. We certainly owe an enormous
debt of gratitude to Sen. Erpenbach for being THE champion of our bill and
essentially getting Sen. Moen to take the position he did.
·
If the bill is passed out of the Health Committee on
the February 20th, Sen. Chvala has given us a preliminary indication that it
will be scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor on March 7th.
·
IF things proceed as hoped, the Perfusion Licensing
Bill could be won the Governor’s desk for his signature by the end of the
month. That does not leave much time
for everyone to do their part and construct a couple of letters urging our
Senators (by the 7th of March) to support the bill and the Governor to sign it
into law. Again, these communications
do not necessarily have to be a lengthy dialogue about the merits of the bill,
but more an attempt by a constituent to voice his/her concern in the matter.
************** Senate Health Committee Hearing ***************
02-20-02
Perfusion
Licensing Bill is Passed Out of the Senate Health Committee with
a vote of 7 to 0
(2 open/uncast votes) !!
·
After a long anticipated executive vote by the
Senate Health Committee, we unexpectedly not only saw Chairman Moen vote
against his own amendment to change the bill to certification (it did not pass
- 0 to 8), but ultimately saw him vote in favor of passing our bill out of
committee. We sincerely could not have
asked for a better result.
·
As expected Sen. Moen introduced an amendment to
change the perfusion licensing bill to a certification bill. But in a complete surprise, he decided to
vote with the majority against his own amendment and ultimately vote in favor
of passing the licensing bill out of the committee. Now the bill will go to the Senate Organizational Committee which
is responsible for scheduling the bills for floor votes. However, because the Senate Org met today to
set the agenda for February 26th, we were not able to get on the calendar for
that floor date. We have had
conversations with Sen. Chvala and are anticipating the Senate Org committee to
schedule (at their next agenda meeting - 27th February) our bill for a vote on
March 7th. This is certainly one of
those times to reach out to your Senator, if you haven't spoken to them lately
on the issue, and refresh their minds on the importance of supporting the Perfusion
Licensing Bill (AB-256) when it gets introduced to the floor for the vote.
·
We now have the luxury of being able to claim the
bill has passed out of the Senate Health Committee with a unanimous vote and a
vote of affirmation from the chairman.
·
Everyone should have received a letter from the
Legislative Task Force urging them to take part in a letter writing campaign to
the Governor. If things fall in order
as we hope they will (solid support from the entire Senate), the bill should be
on the Governor's desk shortly after the 7th of March. At which time WE need to create a compulsion
for him to sign the bill into law as an act.
Send a letter to Governor McCallum and solicit the support of a couple
of colleagues to do the same.
·
A special "salute" needs to go out to
James Brown and the perfusion staff at St. Mary's Hospital. James made a last minute contact with his
Senator (Robson) which solidified her vote in favor of our bill. You would be very surprised at how obligated
a legislator can become when a constituent voices their concern on a matter -
thus taking the "no obligation vote" off the table.
·
David Malkow and the rest of the perfusion staff at
St. Mary's where kind enough to play host to two of the Governor's aids today
as well. This was a great opportunity
for us to get up-close and personal with influential gubernatorial people
regarding the responsibilities of a perfusionist. The visit will certainly pay dividends when the bill lands on the
Governor's desk.
·
This means we have cleared hurdle #3 of 5. The last two remaining are the Senate floor
vote and the Governor's signature. So
take a few moments....send a couple of emails/write a couple of letters and
hopefully you will be hearing from me with more good news in a couple of weeks.
·
In any correspondence with your Senators, simply
refer to our bill, " that we are anticipating the bill to be scheduled for
a vote on the Senate floor on the 7 of March".
Writing a letter to the Governor and your state Senator are, without a
doubt, the most important actions YOU can take to help in the success of
our legislative campaign!!!
As you can see, this is a very dynamic and exciting time in
the legislative process. I will try to
keep you as informed as possible, but if you have any particular
concerns….please feel free to contact me personally.
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