By SCOTT JORGENSEN

SALEM, Ore.- In its first meeting of the 2012 Oregon legislative session, the Senate Health Care, Human Services and Rural Health Policy Committee held informational hearings on a series of bills.

Among the bills discussed during the Wednesday, Feb. 1 meeting was Senate Bill 1503, the Influenza Prevention and Education Act.

Jack Dempsey, assistant executive director of health policy and government relations for the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA), testified in support of SB 1503.

Written testimony submitted by Dempsey stated that the ONA “believes that all nurses and other health care workers should be vaccinated against seasonal influenza.”

“We also believe that employees have a right to make an educated decision to decline the vaccination, that vaccination status should be treated as a confidential health record, and that it should not be used as a condition of employment,” Dempsey wrote.

Also speaking in favor of SB 1503 was Patty O’Sullivan, a contract lobbyist for the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems (OAHHS).

O’Sullivan told committee members that the OAHHS would like facilities to decide on their own whether or not to mandate vaccinations for health care workers, describing it as a “management-labor issue.” She added that religious and other exemptions for vaccinations still would be available to health care professionals under SB 1503.

State Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson ,D-Gresham, chair of the committee, said she would schedule a workshop on SB 1503 for the group’s Friday, Feb. 3 meeting.

Joshua Bishop, director of pharmacy and government programs for PacificSource health plan, testified on behalf of SB 1506. If passed, Bishop said, that bill would create a two-year pilot program to provide mental health medications for patients in the Central Oregon region.

However, Sen. Alan Bates ,D-Ashland, and Sen. Jeff Kruse ,R-Roseburg, expressed concerns about possible cost overruns that the program could incur. They said that language in the current draft of SB 1506 states the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and the treatment provider both would be “held harmless” in the event of overruns and questioned how that could be possible.

Bates said he wanted to hear from the OHA about the issue. Bishop said that he would be “very open to modifying the language” in the bill for the sake of clarification.

Monnes Anderson suggested that amendments be made to SB 1506 and scheduled a work session on it for Monday, Feb. 6.

Senators also heard testimony regarding SB 1507. That bill would remove the existing informed consent process used during testing for the HIV virus.

Written testimony in support of SB 1507 was provided by Gary Oxman, a health officer for the Multnomah County Health Department.

Oxman wrote that “many infected individuals are unaware that they are infected.”

“During this period, people who are unaware of their status pose a serious risk for inadvertently spreading infection,” Oxman wrote.

However, Oxman described the state’s current requirement for informed consent prior to HIV testing to be a “significant barrier” that “creates significant disincentives” for health care providers seeking to provide that service.

“Providers we are working with are hesitant to offer wide-scale HIV testing because of the time and effort required for informed consent, and concerns about potential liability,” he wrote. “Simply stated, SB 1507 removes the current statutory requirement for explicit informed consent prior to HIV testing. In its place, it requires that health-care providers notify the individual to be tested, and allow the individual the opportunity to decline testing.”

That process can be done orally or in writing, Oxman wrote, adding that SB 1507 “leaves intact the current law’s strong confidentiality protections.”

Speaking against SB 1507 was Becky Straus, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon. Straus said that the ACLU of Oregon wanted to preserve patients’ ability to opt out of the testing and have it be truly voluntary. She said that HIV is “unique” from other medical conditions, in that it still carries some social stigma.

Straus also said that employment discrimination could result from the disclosure of a patient’s status as being HIV positive.

Kruse said that stigma will linger as long as HIV is treated separately from other diseases. Bates, himself a doctor, agreed.

“This makes the stigma worse,” Bates said. “It’s time to move forward with this bill.”

A work session for SB 1507 is scheduled to take place during the committee’s Friday, Feb. 3 meeting.