SB 98

In the villages, CHAPs are not licensed and yet they may be asked to administer a benzodiazepine for seizures, as an example. How will this bill impact the CHA program in providing care in remote villages?

Telemedicine has utility in specialty areas such as psychiatry in which there are few providers especially in Alaska. There is also great use of it in remote villages, but using it to cover primary care and other specialties may lead to duplication of services.
Billing would need to reviewed to ensure patients are not changed a provider fee, RN fee, and telemedicine fee.

Senator Giessel and collegues,

Allowing out of state providers will make enforcement and control almost impossible at the state level. Further, allowing out of state telemedicine will introduce severe downward pressures on the local market as costs in other states may be much lower etc. Last and most important protecting the patient should be the most important consideration.

Just because someone has a license does not mean he is capable. Allowing Narcotics via prescription is just allowing drug users an easy access point. Giving an order to use a benzodiazepine for a seizure
should be easy to separate from giving a person a prescription for anxiety to be filled at a local pharmacy in regards to the law. Perhaps for emergency purposes only in actual clinic or ambulance settings.

If we allow out of state I can guarantee that Blue cross and other out of state telemedicine providers will be prescribing antibiotics for UTI's, ST, Bronchitis very soon and they WILL miss pyelonephritis, Cancer of throat, Pneumonia, etc. Missing these in the elderly may and will cause death.

There will be consequential death from allowing people to prescribe via internet this I am sure.
The easy and anonymous Money will cause charlatanism galore.

Bennett Jackson FNP

Seems to me like the word "physician" should be changed to "Licensed Independent Practitioner" or some other global term (to avoid "mid-level or physician extender" etc.). Also, "appropriate licensed health care provider is present" should be defined as to which licensed providers are being referred to.

the PHYSICIAN language needs to be removed and replaced with TREATING PROVIDER, PROVIDER, PROVIDER OF RECORD or other inclusive language.

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. I will be addressing these this afternoon. I appreciate the feed back.