The Committee on Health and Human Resources met this afternoon.
Markup & Passage
House Bill 4622 removes the Office of the Inspector General from the Department of Health, where is it for administrative purposes and clarifies that the Office of the Inspector General has the ability to conduct performance audits, financial audits, evaluations, and attestations engagements of the Department of Human Services, the Department of Health, and the Department of Health Facilities and their independent contractors.
House Bill 4640 adds crystalline polymorph psilocybin to the permitted list of distributed and prescribed drugs if approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration and scheduled by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Two amendments were adopted. The first adds synthetic kratom alkaloid to the Drug Schedule I, having no medicinal value. The second amendment adds organic psilocybin to the permitted list, provided it is approved by the USFDA. Another amendment was made to remove THC from the Drug Schedule I, but was rejected.
Committee Hearing
House Bill 4740 makes changes to code relating to West Virginia’s Rural Health Transformation Program and the State of West Virginia’s commitments to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This includes exempting program implementation from purchasing restrictions, adopting the Presidential Fitness Test, and requiring the Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine to require continuing education in nutrition.
House Bill 4629 allows individuals performing cessation research conducted by an institute of higher education to provide tobacco products to 18 to 21-year-olds as part of a sanctioned medically supervised program.
House Bill 4715 allows qualified physician assistants and certified nurse practitioners to practice without physician supervision. The sponsor of the bill stated that the bill was brought to her by individuals in the profession wanting to provide better access to care in rural areas. A representative for the Board of Medicine and several other boards stated that collaboration between physicians and other healthcare practitioners lead to better care for patients.
