Hello, everyone!  Here’s our monthly legislative update:

On the national level, there’s not much to say that wasn’t in our previous federal legislative update.  AMHCA is continuing to work on supporting Medicare parity for counselors, but I’m aware of no additional information on Senate Bill 286 and House Bill 945, which would extend Medicare billing privileges to licensed counselors nationwide.

On a state level, there are several updates to discuss:

First, FMHCA and its lobbyist have already secured a sponsor for a stand-alone bill that would make licensure portability to Florida much easier and consistent with the national plan endorsed by AMHCA, NBCC, ACES, and AASCB (see https://www.amhca.org/2017portability for more info).  However, we are holding off on announcing the details until we finalize the list of co-sponsors.

Senate Bill 180 is currently in committee, and it would ban conversation (reparative) therapy in Florida, though for various reasons there is speculation that it is doubtful to pass.

There are a couple Florida board rule changes that FMHCA has made members aware of.  I have included links to posts on FMHCA’s forum that you can access if you are a member of FMHCA:

1. The 491 Board is now limiting qualified supervisors to a maximum of 25 interns: https://fmhca.wildapricot.org/Member-Forum/7873434

2.  A new telehealth bill was passed that went into effect on 7/1/19.  There are so many nuances to the new law, that I thought it would be best to post the information form FMHCA’s forum as an attachment.  Counselors often have questions about telehealth rules state-to-state.  For example, what if my client goes on a vacation to Texas?  Can I do a webcam session with her, or is that illegal?  A free app has been developed that provides counselors with all of the information about telehealth laws and rules state-to-state.  Learn more here: https://www.ebglaw.com/telemental-health-laws-app/