Advocate For Physicians In Nevada

The Washoe County Medical Society (WCMS) and the Nevada State Medical Association (NSMA) advocate for physicians in the legislature and in front of regulatory boards such as the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, Nevada Dental Board, Board of Osteopathic Medicine, State Board of Pharmacy and the State Board of Health, among others.

2016-2017 Regulatory Successes

• Successfully defeated a Dental Board regulation which authorized Dentists and Dental hygienists to administer botulinum toxin (“botox”) and dermal filers.
• Successfully defeated a Board of Health regulation which would require all providers of care to report actual or suspected cancer to the Cancer Registry or face a $25,000 fine.
• Successfully lobbied to pass a new regulation that allows physician prescribers to delegate the transmission of an electronic prescription to a designated agent such as an RN, MA or scribe.
• Successfully negotiated a Board of Medical Examiner’s regulation to provide common sense guidelines for physician oversight of a Medical Assistant.

2017 Legislative Successes

• Secured Governor’s veto of an insurance company bill that would ban balance billing and cap fees for out of network health care services to the insurer’s economic advantage.
• Negotiated with the Governor’s office to ensure new opioid legislation preserves clinical judgment and avoids draconian prescribing caps found in other states.
• Improved a collaborative pharmacy bill to ensure that physician’s oversight and clinical judgment directs the patient care and to clarify in Nevada law that pharmacists do not diagnose.
• Negotiated a common-sense revision to a proposed partnership bill which allows physicians and psychologists to form partnerships and still protects the tenants of Nevada’s implied prohibition of the corporate practice of medicine.
• Defeated a measure which would criminalize and prohibit a physician from performing any procedure deemed to reassign the anatomical sex of a patient including relocating the urethral meatus, unless the child assented to the procedure.
• Successfully removed physicians from a bill that would assess a “provider tax” on all physicians to leverage monies for Medicaid funding.
  Protected patients from unskilled application of botulinum toxin
  (“botox”) by limiting those licensed professionals who may administer and requiring that botox injections be administered only by licensed professionals in a medical facility.
• Protected Ambulatory Surgical Centers from attempts by hospitals to force certain procedures into hospitals.
• Secured Governor’s veto of a bill that would allow any Nevadan to purchase Medicaid without limitation.
• Negotiated the reduction of proposed mandatory CME for suicide prevention from 3 CME units every two years to 2 CME units every four years.
• Worked with Board of Medical Examiners to authorize their ability to take possession of records due to physician death or another incapacitation.