Dear MSSNY and Alliance Members:

The 2015 legislative session conclude early this morning. Through your efforts guided by MSSNY leadership and the collective efforts of MSSNY staff, MSSNY has had a very successful legislative year.

As part of the budget, we: (1) secured $127.4M in funding for the Excess Medical Liability program; (2) defeated accreditation and onerous new regulatory requirements for urgent care practices and practices which offer after-hour care; (3) defeated the retail clinic bill; (4) defeated proposals which would have imposed additional registration and reporting requirements on physician OBS practices; and (5) secured the elimination of fees physicians currently have to pay to initiate a Workers Compensation arbitration proceeding.

As the session concluded, we have secured many more victories which demonstrate the tangible value of MSSNY to its physician members. These victories are discussed in further detail below but can be quickly listed: we (1) defeated the date-of-discovery statute of limitationss; (2) defeated a CME mandate for pain management, addiction and end- of-life care; (3) defeated scope-of-practice expansion by the podiatrists, dentists, optometrists and many other non-physician practitioners; (4) participated in a coalition which secured passage of legislation requiring school-based immunizations against the meningococcal disease for every person entering seventh grade and 12th grade; and (5) again defeated a last ditch effort by CVS Health to secure enactment of legislation to secure approval to establish corporate owned retail clinics statewide without establishment of public need as is normally required under the certificate of need provisions of current law.

As we did when the budget negotiations concluded, your lobby team would again like to acknowledge each and every County and Specialty Medical Society, MSSNY leadership, and the many rank-and-file physicians who answered the call for grassroots action and met locally with their representatives or wrote a letter and/or took a day away from their practice to travel to Albany to personally meet with their elected representatives on issues of importance to all of medicine.

Sustained physician involvement can make a difference. Because of your efforts, we list the many successes that together we have achieved. It is our hope that you will share this newsletter with your colleagues so that we may continue to build membership in MSSNY to support even greater legislative accomplishments in the future.

Your Lobby Team,
Liz, Moe, Pat, and Barb