Missouri PAs Celebrate Legislation Modernizing PA Practice

New Law Replaces Reference to Supervision with Collaboration

August 7, 2019

PAs in Missouri are celebrating the enactment of Senate Bill 514, a healthcare omnibus bill, which includes provisions that modernize PA practice in the state. With the passage of SB 514, references to “supervision” are replaced with “collaboration.” This new law will make Missouri the eleventh state to use a term other than supervision to describe PA practice. Additionally, the legislation aligns the collaboration requirements for PA-physician teams with those for NP-physician teams in Missouri by:

• Eliminating the requirement that a physician practice at the same facility as the PA for four hours every fourteen days; and any other direct supervision language added via regulation could be met via telemedicine capabilities.
• Removing language that required a PA to practice at a location where the collaborating physician routinely sees patients.
• Deleting the requirement that a PA and physician practice at the same location for thirty days prior to the PA practicing in a remote setting. The determination for how much time, if any, the PA and physician must practice at the same location prior to the PA practicing remotely will be made at the practice level.

The Missouri Academy of Physician Assistants (MOAPA) worked tirelessly on the passage of this legislation, which is great for PA practice in Missouri and will increase patient access to care. AAPA conducted research and assisted MOAPA in drafting the legislation.

“The MOAPA leadership and I are ecstatic about the passage of S.B. 514. With the enactment of this legislation PAs will practice under a model that more accurately describes the PA-physician team and moves towards parity for PAs and NPs,” said MOAPA President Paul Winter, PA-C.

The bill was signed by Gov. Michael Parson on July 11, 2019, and will become effective on Aug. 28, 2019.

For more information contact Shannon Morey, JD, AAPA director of State Advocacy and Outreach, at [email protected].