President's Message

Posted on: 4/26/24

This week, OHA has a lot to celebrate. And our success is reflective of the unity within our membership. Earlier this week, I asked our members to respond to an advocacy alert on Senate Bill 1675. 

Unfortunately, we don’t always have a lot of time to move the wheels of government and engage with the membership with short notice. However, that’s exactly what we did. With just hours before the House was to hear Senate Bill 1675, which is our Medicaid guardrails bill, OHA members reached out to their legislators and through this collective effort and the unity in the membership, we were successful in passing this important bill by a vote of 73 to 8. The legislation will now go to conference where the Senate and the House will work through additional revisions to the bill language. Essentially, it provides for an extension of the provider rate floor at 100% of the Medicaid fee schedule. It puts guardrails in place around the auditing practices of health plans, and it provides for a provider-owned option at the next procurement, which will occur in 2029. 
 
Also this week, OHA worked to move passage of HB 3190, the Ensuring Transparency in Prior Authorization Act. This bill establishes controls around prior authorization approvals and denials. A detailed description of the bill is highlighted in this week’s Hotline.  

Also acted on this week is HB 1713, the white bagging bill, which was first acted on in last year’s session. This legislation applies to “white-bagged drugs” and prohibits health plans and PBMs from refusing to pay for these physician-administered drugs and prohibits them from requiring patients to self-administer injectables. 

Both HB 1713 and HB 3190 are headed to the governor for his approval. In addition to these three major pieces of legislation, which benefit the hospital field, advancing this week, the distribution of SHOPP and directed payments were also released to hospitals. If your organization has not received any payments to date, please let us know so we can assist with tracking down your distribution.

Coming together and demonstrating unity in our advocacy approach is central to the work we do to support our field and to improve health and healthcare in Oklahoma.


Rich Rasmussen
President & CEO