The Health Professions Subcommittee advanced five bills — including a buprenorphine counseling requirement fix backed by testimony about two fatal patient overdoses, and three new interstate licensing compacts — while striking one bill from the docket and passing three others by for the day. The massage therapy compact bill (HB 579) drew the only organized opposition, with witnesses raising human trafficking concerns, but still passed 9-0 with one abstention.
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Patty Glenn of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards argued the changes in HB 579 are 'material changes,' specifically that allowing entry with under the 625-hour requirement plus two years of an unencumbered license with no practice requirement is 'a gaping hole to allow human trafficking to enter,' given that the massage profession is 'already inundated with human trafficking and bad actors.' She requested the committee not move the bill forward. Delegate Glass (Jackie H. Glass) responded that the work was done with the Council on State Governments and the DoD, that only five states have joined the compact since 2020, and that innovation is needed, adding that Virginia would lose its seat at the table if it did not adopt the changes.
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“We've actually had two separate occasions in the past five years where I've had to discharge a patient and not continue their medication because they were unable to fulfill the counseling requirement. In one case, it was a working mother who had four jobs and was not able to make the time. In another case, there were some other complex scenarios. But the important thing is that in both of those scenarios where we had to discharge the patient because the law currently requires the therapy, both of those patients tragically had fatal overdoses and passed away.”
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Sign in to subscribeGood morning. I'm calling to order the first meeting of the Health Profession Subcommittee of Health and Human Services. If the clerk will please open the roll so we can take attendance. All right, thank you. And we have a quorum. And so the first bill we'll hear today will go to patrons not on the subcommittee. So we are at House Bill 7:12. Delegate Waxman, please tell us about your bill. Yes, I will be. Thank you. Madam Chair. Madam Chair. This bill is actually one of the things that we talked about in Joint Commission of Health Care. It is one of their recommendations. It deals with the substance abuse disorder drug buprofenone, buprenone. When it came out originally, there were a lot of federal regulations around it. Doctors had to get special DEA numbers. They were limited to the number of patients they would have. That was a very rigorous counseling program. Since then, the DEA and the FDA have pulled back on those regulations. Most of those things are no longer required. There's a lot of more understanding about the product in the market. And we seem to have a little bit of a conflict or…
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