ARTICLE
What TCA Is Fighting for During 89th Texas Legislative Session The Texas Chiropractic Association took over the State Capitol last week for TCA Legislative Day, and what a day it was for chiropractic in Texas! More than 260 chiropractors, students and faculty from Parker University and Texas Chiropractic College, office staff, family members, patients and chiropractic supporters showed up to represent the profession. As your TCA President, I couldn’t have been any prouder, especially during TCA’s now-iconic group picture on Capitol steps. TCA participated in more than 150 meetings with Texas Senate and House offices, and they were extremely productive. Many of our elected officials and their staff were receptive to our message of expanding access to chiropractic for all Texans. A few of them even had their own personal chiropractic stories and are big fans of what we do. For those who attended TCA Legislative Day, thank you for spending the day with YOUR state association. Your chiropractic colleagues and the patients in your care will benefit from your participation in our big advocacy event. By being there, you help TCA protect, promote and preserve chiropractic. If you could not be in Austin, you might wonder what TCA is fighting for during the 89th Texas Legislative Session. Here’s a quick overview: 1. HB 861 (Howard) / SB 268 (Perry) – Health Care Regulatory Reform: Our current system makes licensees potentially accountable to multiple licensing boards, has the potential to waste taxpayer resources through inefficient and potentially duplicative investigations, and means a board could act against a provider of whose practice they have very little understanding. HB 861 / SB 268 will save taxpayer resources by ensuring a health care practitioner is regulated by their own board – which specializes in efficient regulation of their practice – as the legislature intended. 2. HB 1642 (Cain) / SB 832 (Parker) – Expedited Insurance Credentialing: Health care provider insurance credentialing is the “process of collecting, assessing and validating qualifications and other relevant information pertaining to a physician or provider to determine eligibility to deliver health care services.” The Texas Department of Insurance requires an insurer to determine a provider’s eligibility within 90 days of the provider’s application submission, although Texas law provides an expedited credentialing process to immediately credential physicians, podiatrists, and therapeutic optometrists on a provisional basis when joining an already credentialed health care practice. Currently, chiropractors are excluded. However, HB 1642 / SB 832 provides the same expedited credentialing process to chiropractors as for physicians, podiatrists, and therapeutic optometrists to ensure Texans can obtain prompt chiropractic treatment under a process that has been proven to work for other provider types. 3. HB 1641 (Munoz) / SB 1811 (Menendez) – Prohibit Health Insurer “Claw Backs” Based on Extrapolation. This bill prohibits health insurance plans from conducting a sample audit of a health care provider’s claims and then extrapolating those findings across the remaining unreviewed portion of the provider’s claims and attempting to recoup overpayments based on that extrapolation. This bill does not prohibit insurance plans from conducting audits and recouping overpaid claims and does not apply to Medicaid. However, it will prevent abusive claims audit behavior by insurance plans against health care providers. 4. HB 1791 (Bucy) – Further Addressing the Opioid Crisis. HB 1791 will help stem the tide of opioid addiction and the harms of overdose by requiring prescribers to consider referring patients to conservative, nonpharmalogical care and issue a prescription for an opioid antagonist when prescribing opioids for acute pain. HB 1791 will help reduce Texans’ reliance on opioids and the associated risk of addiction by ensuring patients are informed about health care alternatives that can address root causes of their acute pain. 5. HB 4145 (Dyson) – Close the “Timely Billing” Loophole. Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 146.002 requires a health care practitioner to submit a bill to a patient, their health insurer, or “other responsible party” within 11 months of providing the service. Failure to comply results in the practitioner forfeiting their right to payment, protecting patients from unreasonably delayed medical bills. When someone gets hurt and obtains legal representation in a personal injury claim, a health care practitioner may provide treatment under a “letter of protection” from an attorney, where they agree to treat the patient and delay payment until the personal injury dispute has been resolved in exchange for a promise to be compensated later. However, letters of protection often say an attorney is not “responsible” for the patient’s bills, and some enterprising attorneys and automobile insurers have begun to use Section 146.002 to avoid payment to the practitioner, arguing they failed to comply with the timely billing requirement and are not entitled to payment. HB 4145 closes this loophole by permitting a health care practitioner to satisfy the timely billing requirement by submitting a patient’s bill to their legal representative in a personal injury claim within 11 months of providing the service unless otherwise directed by the patient. In addition to advocating for its own legislation, TCA also monitors other legislation that could negatively impact chiropractic. As THE Voice of All Texas Chiropractors, TCA is here to advocate for you and your patients. In the past decade, our legislative team and lobbyists have paved the way for 10 pro-chiropractic bills signed into law. With your help, we hope to add to that tally in 2025. Thank you for being a TCA member and supporting our advocacy initiatives. It’s a team effort and you’re part of the team. J. Todd Whitehead, DC TCA President