What's happening
This bill requires physician profiles online to be updated at least every 90 days and be available in multiple languages.
Why it matters
More frequent updates to physician profiles (every 90 days) mean patients can make decisions based on the most current information about a doctor’s history with medical misconduct or malpractice. This could help patients avoid providers with recent disciplinary actions or lawsuits.
Requiring profiles to be available in multiple languages increases healthcare transparency and accessibility for non-English speakers. This change helps ensure that all patients, regardless of language proficiency, can understand important information about their healthcare providers.
The bill shifts the update requirement from being tied to physician-submitted changes to a fixed schedule, creating more predictable and uniform updates. This may reduce gaps in critical information and improve the reliability of the online physician directory.
Greater public access to up-to-date and multilingual physician information could encourage higher standards of accountability and trust in the medical profession. It also potentially places additional administrative responsibilities on the Department of Health to maintain these updated and translated profiles.
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Who cares
Headline styles
Update Online Doctor Records
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
History
- Referred to health
- Referred to health
Full text
1 pageUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
1023
2019-2020 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
January 14, 2019
Introduced by M. of A. SIMOTAS, COOK, RIVERA, ZEBROWSKI, MONTESANO -read once and referred to the Committee on Health
AN ACT to amend the public health law, in relation to electronic access to physician profiles
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Subdivision 9 of section 2995-a of the public health law, as amended by section 3 of part A of chapter 57 of the laws of 2015, is amended to read as follows:
9. The department shall, in addition to hard copy physician profiles, provide for electronic access to and copying of physician profiles developed pursuant to this section through the system commonly known as the Internet. [The department shall update a physician's online profile within thirty days of receipt of a completed physician profile survey or any change in profile information.] Such electronic access to physician profiles shall be updated at least once every ninety days to reflect changes to such profiles with respect to proceedings for medical misconduct and actions for medical malpractice. Such physician profiles shall be made available in English and other such languages that the commissioner deems appropriate.
§ 2. This act shall take effect on the sixtieth day after it shall have become a law.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD01397-01-9
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.