BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 1380

By: Truitt

Public Health

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Texas medical school programs are struggling to provide enough primary care physicians for Texans. Current law requires certain applicants for a license to practice medicine in Texas who graduate from a medical school outside the United States or Canada to complete three years of residency to be eligible for the license. This requirement may discourage recent medical school graduates from applying for positions in Texas because other states require a shorter residency period, allowing a physician to find a permanent position more quickly.

C.S.H.B. 1380 seeks to address this issue by allowing certain applicants for a license to practice medicine in Texas who graduated from a medical school outside the United States or Canada to be eligible for a Texas license if the applicant is in the final year of an approved three-year residency program.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 1380 amends the Occupations Code, in a provision establishing the general eligibility requirements and a provision establishing additional eligibility requirements to be licensed to practice medicine in Texas, adds, for a graduate from a medical school located outside the United States or Canada, the eligibility requirement that an applicant for licensure be in the final year of a three-year residency program approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education or the American Osteopathic Association as an alternative to the requirement that the applicant successfully complete three years of graduate medical training approved by the Texas Medical Board.

C.S.H.B. 1380 removes from the provision establishing additional eligibility requirements to be licensed to practice medicine in Texas that an applicant successfully complete at least two years of graduate medical training in the United States or Canada that was approved by the board and at least one year of graduate medical training outside the United States or Canada that was approved for advanced standing by a specialty board organization approved by the board as a qualification in the alternative to successful completion of three years of graduate medical school training in the United States or Canada that was approved by the board.

C.S.H.B. 1380, in a provision establishing the eligibility requirements to be licensed to practice medicine in Texas for an applicant who has been a student of a foreign medical school in the Fifth Pathway Program, adds the eligibility requirement that an applicant for licensure be in the final year of a three-year residency program approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education or the American Osteopathic Association as an alternative to the requirement that the applicant successfully complete three years of graduate medical training in the United States or Canada that was approved by the board as of the date the training was completed.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2011.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

C.S.H.B. 1380 differs from the original by adding the alternative minimum residency qualification to the general eligibility requirements and to the eligibility requirements for a student of a foreign medical school in the fifth pathway program, whereas the original, in those same provisions and in the alternative to the same minimum education requirements, decreases from three years to two years the minimum number of years of board-approved graduate medical training in the United States or Canada an applicant is required to have successfully completed to be eligible for a license.

C.S.H.B. 1380 differs from the original by adding the alternative minimum residency qualification to the additional eligibility requirements for a graduate of a medical school located outside of the United States or Canada and by removing the minimum two-year graduate medical training and one-year advanced standing specialty graduate medical training requirements as alternatives to the required minimum three-year board-approved graduate medical training in the United States or Canada, whereas the original removes as an alternative qualification the minimum three-year board-approved graduate medical training in the United States or Canada and the one-year advanced standing specialty training required in conjunction with at least two years of board-approved graduate medical training in the United States or Canada to instead qualify an applicant who has at least two years of graduate medical training in the United States or Canada that was approved by the board.