Welcome to a new week of NCMS Morning Rounds.

May 17, 2021

NCMS Legislative Update

Last week at the NC General Assembly nearly 100 bills quickly moved through committees and 45 were voted on in either the House or Senate in advance of Thursday’s crossover deadline. While all proposals technically are ‘alive’ until the session officially ends, crossover marks the completion of the first stage of the General Assembly’s work for this long session with the winnowing out those bills with the support necessary to pass through at least one chamber. With crossover behind them, legislators in the House and Senate now will shift their focus to the state budget process, and hope to have a spending plan in place for the start of the state’s new fiscal year on July 1.

While you can see the many bills we are monitoring on our legislative blog here, several among those that remain active after the crossover deadline deserve special mention.

HB96 – Allow Pharmacists to Administer Injectable Drugs which would have allowed pharmacists unrestricted authority to administer any type of injectable. Working with our medical specialty society partners, the NCMS was able to narrow the scope of the language in the proposal to allow only injections pursuant to a prescription, only in individuals over age 18 and mandates reporting back to the prescriber. These changes make the proposal better and safer for patients. We will continue to monitor this legislation so watch your NCMS Morning Rounds newsletter and NCMS Political Pulse video in the coming days for updates.

The other bill of note, SB575 – Pharmacists Improve Public Health Needs, made it through the Senate chamber, but only after the NCMS and our partner medical specialty societies were able to narrow the list of drugs pharmacists would be allowed to prescribe to four – contraceptives, smoking cessation, PEP and pre-natal vitamins. The NCMS and our medical specialty society partners are continuing to work with bill sponsors on the language in this proposal. Watch this newsletter for updates.

As legislators turn their attention to the state budget, now is a great time to reach out to your legislator to discuss not only pending legislation like the bills mentioned above, but also policy priorities to include in the state’s spending plan. If you don’t already have a relationship with your representatives, here is where you can look up how to contact them to begin the conversation about what is important to you as a physician or PA constituent.

Three Ways to Learn About the NC Medical Board’s Year

Information about the NC Medical Board’s Annual Report, which gives a comprehensive overview of the Board’s activities for 2020, is available in three formats – in its customary electronic version of the written report, in a short, 2-minute video and also in a podcast.

The report includes licensee demographics, licensing and enforcement data and highlights of NCMB’s work throughout the most recent calendar year.

Access the electronic version here; watch the video here and listen to the 21-minute podcast here.

NCMS Leadership Development Programs Recruiting Now

The NCMS Foundation’s Kanof Institute for Physician Leadership currently is recruiting for two of its programs – Leadership College and Health Care Leadership and Management. Both programs are project-based and focus on developing authentic leadership. That means alumni of the programs have looked inward to examine their own strengths and weaknesses as leaders to understand how to be most effective in driving positive change as part of the larger health care team as well as in the broader community.

The Institute’s Leadership College delves into an individual’s leadership development. Each participant works on a year-long project involving a real-world issue where they can demonstrate their newly acquired leadership insights. At the culmination of the program each scholar summarizes their research findings in a TEDTalk-style presentation we call MEDTalks. You can watch the wide variety of previous years’ presentations here.

Learn more about and apply for Leadership College here.

The Health Care Leadership and Management track has a finance and management component as well as leadership development focus. This year-long course places special emphasis on deeper leadership development and skills that include strategic planning, negotiation and financial literacy and application.

Learn more about and apply for Health Care Leadership and Management here.

Both programs boast small class sizes with lots of personal attention and interaction with faculty and colleagues. The courses went virtual during the pandemic but are now moving toward a hybrid of virtual and in-person sessions.

Interested in hearing from alumni about their Kanof Institute experiences? The Summer 2020 issue of the NCMS Bulletin online magazine features a variety of Kanof Institute alumni recounting their ‘leadership journeys,’ and how the programs helped them each define what leadership means to them and how they currently are using the skills they gained. Read these profiles here.

If you have any questions about the programs, please contact Aubrey Cuthbertson [email protected].

In the News

CDC Backtracks Saying Fully Vaccinated People Can Go Maskless Indoors, STAT, 5-13-21

Learning Opportunity

The NC Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Immunization Branch invites you to attend a live training session on Tuesday, May 18 from 6 to 7 pm on ‘Becoming a COVID-19 Vaccine Provider: We Need YOU!’ Register here.

This training will help primary care practices understand the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Program and show how to enroll in North Carolina’s COVID-19 Vaccine Management System (CVMS). CVMS is a secure, cloud-based vaccine management solution for COVID-19 that enables vaccine management and data sharing across providers, hospitals, agencies and local, state and federal governments on one common platform. For more information, please visit the NCDHHS CVMS website here.

If you have policies you’d like your NCMS Board of Directors to consider, please complete the Board input form here. Thanks for reading!