Bill creating standards for community health workers in Georgia has stalled

A plan to strengthen health access in rural and underserved communities in Georgia through community health workers is on life support in the Georgia Legislature.

The legislation, House Bill 291, has passed the House and an amended version passed the Senate Health and Human Services Committee last week. But in Monday’s gatekeeping Senate Rules Committee, it didn’t make the cut to reach the Senate floor this year.  

The Georgia Legislature’s two-year session is scheduled to end Thursday at midnight, and all bills not passed will die with it.

HB 291 got on the Rules Committee’s list of bills for a full Senate vote last year, but then the Senate ended its session hours early and HB 291 didn’t come up in time.

Community health workers aren’t nurses or EMTs. They are supposed to be people with knowledge about the health system and basic needs, able to make connections between people on the ground and health systems they may find confusing or distant.  

Community health workers already exist but there are no official standards in Georgia. Just about anyone can call themselves a community health worker, gaining trust of vulnerable people. 

At the same time, some hospitals have tried to take up the slack by training their own staff of community health workers, with no uniform standards across health systems. 

House Bill 291 would mandate criminal background checks and set up standards for educating the workers and certifying that they meet basic standards.

“If somebody is going to pay you to provide this service, they need to know that you are trained and that the services are there,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Darlene Taylor, a Thomasville Republican. “Do you know how to do CPR? Are you going to be able to care and provide the services that meet specific patient needs? That’s why it’s important to be trained. You just don’t hang out a shingle and say, ‘I’m a community health worker.’”

Natasha Taylor, deputy director of Georgia Watch, a consumer advocacy group, is representing community health workers’ groups advocating for the bill. Not only would it standardize training and guardrails, she noted, but certification would create a pathway for the community health workers to be paid by Medicaid.

Both Taylor the legislator and Taylor the advocate emphasized that the bill itself doesn’t spend state money on the workers.

Natasha Taylor said it didn’t appear there was strong resistance in the Senate, and that concerns seemed to have been allayed about creating a government expense or big government. Rather, she said, it just wasn’t the same priority in the Senate.

Some members of the Senate Rules Committee that bypassed HB 291 Monday morning seemed to confirm that.

Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Ben Watson, a Savannah Republican, oversaw the bill’s passage through his committee. 

He also serves on the Rules Committee. A slew of presenters asked for their bills to make the list of those that would come up for a full senate vote, including Taylor with her bill. Watson and other committee members were limited in the number of bills they could each request, and they all chose other priorities.

Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte was on the Rules Committee as well. “It’s a really good bill, no real reason it wasn’t chosen,” the Dallas Republican said in a text message Monday afternoon. Watson said he agreed. 

Legislation can always be hung on another bill, and Senate leaders can change schedules if they want, but as of Monday’s meeting the Rules Committee chairman said that would be the committee’s last for the session.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

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