Many Missourians want to avoid opioids when given an option for dealing with pain, and one state representative wants to make sure they know what their choices are.
Representative Melanie Stinnett (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Bill 2182 would require the Department of Health and Senior Services to create an educational pamphlet on the use of non-opioid options for pain management. It would cover pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments and related advantages and disadvantages.
The proposal has not been referred to a committee. With the session entering early March, Stinnett knows that isn’t encouraging, but she’s hopeful the one-page provision can be added to some other legislation. Even if it does not gain traction this year, she said the Department has been receptive and could create a pamphlet anyway.
In any case, she wants to see her idea become law to make sure such pamphlets are created, maintained, and updated as an ongoing educational tool.
Even in the absence of a pamphlet, Stinnett encourages Missourians to talk to their doctors and ask about their options.
A Missouri House panel today heard from three doctors, including the Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, about how ready the state is for the coronavirus.
Doctor Randall Williams, Director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Legislators heard Missouri is very prepared and that the best thing Missourians can do to prevent the disease from spreading is wash their hands.
More than 100 people had been confirmed to have the coronavirus in the United States and it is responsible for six deaths in this country as of Monday afternoon. The disease has killed more than 3,000 people globally. House Speaker Elijah Haahr (R-Springfield) created the House Special Committee on Disease Control and Prevention to assess Missouri’s readiness for the disease to appear here.
Doctor Stevan Whitt with the University of Missouri Health System deals with infectious diseases. He told committee chairman Jonathan Patterson (R-Lees Summit) the current rates of infections and deaths suggest a 3.3-percent mortality rate with coronavirus.
No cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Missouri. Williams, who has been in regular contact with federal officials and his counterparts from other states, said samples from fewer than 15 patients in Missouri are being tested for the virus, while California has tested more than 460 people.
Whitt said corona is very much like the common cold or flu in the symptoms that a person presents.
The doctors told lawmakers that the state has a plan in place for dealing with a pandemic and those plans were made available to lawmakers and the media. They also said the best things the public can do to protect against coronavirus and stem its spread are the same things commonly recommended to keep healthy.
Whitt said another concern is the “classic hoarding mentality” applying to things like masks. He said for people who are not sick to wear those affords them very little protection.
The doctors also recommended that those who haven’t gotten a flu shot go ahead and do so, as cases of the flu continue to rise.
Williams said the state health lab in Jefferson City now has the capability to test for coronavirus and have a result in six hours.
Doctors said another concern if the disease reaches Missouri will be in hospital and clinic staffing if staff members begin getting sick.
Speaker Haahr said the legislature is prepared to act as needed to support the response to coronavirus, including by appropriating funds or giving authority for the spending of federal funds. He said the citizens of Missouri should know their government is prepared to protect them from the virus, and said he has complete faith in Williams to head up the state’s response.
The committee will hold additional hearings on an as-needed basis.
Several years ago a woman living in a Missouri nursing home died after being sexually assaulted in that home, and the identity of her attacker will likely never be known. On Friday the Missouri House completed passage of a bill aimed at keeping that from happening to anyone else.
Maribeth and David Russell of Russellville, Missouri, listen as the House passes legislation Maribeth advocated for, for five years, after her mother-in-law was victimized at a nursing home and the crime was not reported to law enforcement. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)
That woman was Maribeth Russell’s mother-in-law, and Russell spent the past five years pushing for a change in Missouri law. That culminated Friday with the passage of House Bill 1635, which requires that law enforcement be notified when it is suspected that a long-term care resident 60-years of age or older has been sexually assaulted.
Russell was in the House when it gave final passage to HB 1635, 139-0.
Russell said that law enforcement was not notified by the nursing home or the hospital of the crime against her mother-in-law. The family assumed such notification was made when the Department of Health and Senior Services was contacted. By the time the family learned that was not the case, it was too late.
HB 1635 would expand Missouri law that requires abuse or neglect to be reported to the Department of Health and Senior Services. Its reporting requirement applies to in-home care providers, adult day care workers, medical and mental health care providers, medical examiners, funeral directors, and those in numerous other professions.
She said the nursing home and hospital that treated her mother-in-law have made it their practice to report possible sexual assaults to law enforcement, and she’s thankful for that. She wants HB 1635 to ensure that all agencies in the state are doing the same.
Bernskoetter is hopeful that, while it is unlikely, the person who attacked Russell’s mother-in-law will one day be identified. In the meantime he hopes that 1635 will be signed into law by the governor, and will prevent the same thing from happening again.
House and Senate conferees have agreed to a budget that would make significant cuts in the Department of Health and Senior Services’ director’s office. House members say that department is needlessly withholding information about a virus outbreak that killed two people in Missouri, including one state employee.
House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (in foreground, right) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Dan Brown (foreground, left) speak to Senator Jamilah Nasheed while House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Justin Alferman (top, center) speaks to Senators Dan Hegeman (top left) and Kiki Curls during a break in the conference committee hearing Monday. Those senators had concerns about Reps. Fitzpatrick’s and Alferman’s intentions to cut money that amounts to the salaries of several people in the Department of Health and Senior Services’ Director’s office, including the director. (photo; Mike Lear, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)
The conference committee agreed to cut money equal to the salaries of eight positions in the director’s office, including the director.
House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Justin Alferman (R-Hermann) is one of several lawmakers who have asked how many people in Missouri have tested positive for the antibodies to the Bourbon virus. The House has also subpoenaed the Department seeking that information, and the Department still hasn’t provided it.
The Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, who had not appeared before the House Budget Committee for any of its public hearings, did appear before the conference committee between House and Senate members that met Monday night to agree on a budget proposal for both chambers to vote on this week. Dr. Randall Williams maintains he can’t release what Alferman and others are asking for.
Alferman said the Department’s argument that the information could lead to the identification of individuals is “ridiculous.”
Some senators on the conference committee wanted to restore what they called “drastic” cuts to DHSS, but Alferman and House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) did not want to back down. Alferman had already agreed to reverse another of his amendments in response to the situation that shifted control of the state health lab from DHSS to the Department of Public Safety.
Fitzpatrick noted that Williams was once before at the center of a controversy with serious implications for public health.
In 2016 Williams, while the public health director for the State of North Carolina, joined another state official in rescinding a “do not drink” notice regarding well water potentially contaminated by coal ash. The state’s toxicologist at the time said North Carolina was telling people the water was safe when it knew it wasn’t, and went so far as to accuse other state officials of “playing down the risk.”
Democrats who opposed the cuts to DHSS noted the positions cut in the Director’s office would include the lawyers who interpret for the Department how it must act to comply with state and federal laws.
Backers of the cuts said they are concerned about the safety of the public, and that includes Missourians knowing whether they should be concerned about a bourbon virus outbreak.
The House and Senate are expected to vote Wednesday on the budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The deadline for the legislature to submit a budget proposal to the governor is at the close of business on Friday.
Fitzpatrick said he would consider restoring the money for those positions if the Department gives the House the information it has asked for, but the next opportunity to do that would likely not come until work begins on a supplemental budget bill in January of 2019.
House Budget Committee leaders have proposed deep cuts to the office of the Department of Health and Senior Services’ director because the Department has not provided data on a recent virus outbreak that left a state employee dead.
Representative Justin Alferman (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House communications – click for larger version)
Committee Vice-Chairman Justin Alferman (R-Hermann) said prior to last week’s budget markup hearing that he would make such cuts if the information was not provided. The Department continued to stand by its argument that it cannot release the requested data without violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Alferman’s proposal would cut more than $239-thousand in state revenue and another $925-thousand in federal funds from the director’s office. That represents the salaries of seven attorneys in the director’s office, the director, the assistant director, and the legislative liaison.
Alferman and House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) say the information they want – the number of people in Missouri who tested positive for the antibodies to the Bourbon virus, indicating they have had it – would not include specific patient information that would violate HIPAA.
A department spokesperson on Wednesday night told the House Budget Committee two people in Missouri have tested positive for Bourbon virus, but did not offer information on how many have tested positive for the antibodies. The superintendent of eastern Missouri’s Meramec State Park died last year after contracting the virus from a tick bite. Alferman said he wants to know whether there is a risk to public health from the tick-borne illness.
He said the Department’s rationale is that releasing the number of people tested could allow someone to question park employees about whether they were screened and use a process of elimination to identify who was and was not tested – something Alferman called a “ridiculous” interpretation.
Representative Peter Merideth (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications – click for larger version)
Democrats on the budget committee said while they might agree with Alferman about whether the Department should release that data, they don’t agree with cutting the department’s funding.
St. Louis Democrat Peter Merideth said the proposed cut could result in the firing of people in positions which work to enforce laws protecting Missouri’s seniors.
Other Republicans, however, agreed with Alferman. Representative Don Rone (R-Portageville) told the DHSS spokesperson that with as long as this issue has been developing, the DHSS’ director should have been in front of the committee and not a spokesperson. The director was instead in the nation’s capital that night.
“There’s nothing can be, in Washington D.C., any more important than letting the citizens of this state know that if there is a problem … we’ve got a job to do here and that is protect the people of the state of Missouri, and it’s not right that the director is not here, sitting here, taking these questions,” said Rone.
Alferman’s proposed cut was adopted as part of the committee’s budget proposal, which the committee has voted to send to the House floor. It will be debated there next week when lawmakers return from spring break.