No. SB 1508
Filed under Healthcare.
Maternal Health and Early Learning; Citing this act as the "The Motherhood Initiative"; requiring the Department of Health to establish a certain home visit program for expectant mothers; authorizing the Agency for Health Care Administration to authorize reduced fees for an applicant or a licensee for certain birthing centers; requiring the department to provide a blood pressure monitor and cuff to an expectant mother for certain purposes and to repair the device and provide replacement parts as necessary; authorizing a doula or midwife to be present with his or her client during childbirth at a hospital, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDCompulsory school attendance age drops from six to five, folding what used to be optional kindergarten enrollment into a mandatory requirement, with matching cross-reference updates across the state's prekindergarten and school-readiness programs.
Birth centers lose the statutory rule limiting them to patients "expected to have normal pregnancies, labors, and deliveries," moving that decision entirely to agency rule, alongside new authority for regulators to cut licensing fees for rural birth centers.
The state creates a maternal home-visit program with mental health and substance abuse screening, a mandatory newborn care class before hospital discharge, and insurer and Medicaid coverage, plus a new right for doulas and midwives to attend hospital births.
The Department of Health must supply free blood pressure monitors to expectant mothers to watch for preeclampsia, physicians get new continuing-education requirements on maternal Medicaid coverage, and child care providers get incentives to offer 24-hour care.
AIChildren must now attend school starting at age five instead of six. The separate clause that treated kindergarten at five as merely eligible, not required, is deleted, so that age group moves from optional to mandatory attendance.
AIThe law no longer limits birth centers to patients expected to have normal pregnancies, labors, and deliveries. Selection criteria and risk status are now defined entirely by agency rule, with no statutory floor.
AIThe Healthy Start home visit program must screen expectant mothers for depression and substance abuse and refer at-risk mothers to treatment. Hospitals and birth centers must also offer a 3-hour newborn care class before discharge, and insurers and Medicaid must cover the program.
AIThe Department of Health must give expectant mothers a blood pressure monitor and cuff to watch for preeclampsia and must keep it repaired and supplied with replacement parts.
AIA doula or midwife may now be present with their client during childbirth at a hospital, including rural hospitals, under a newly created statutory right rather than hospital discretion alone.
AIAHCA is authorized, but not required, to reduce licensing fees for applicants or licensees operating birthing centers in rural or other medically underserved areas.
AIDCF must provide some incentive for early learning centers to stay open 24 hours for first responders, health care workers, and others working nontraditional hours, drawn from a non-exclusive list of options.
AIContinuing education for physicians licensed under chapters 458 and 459 must now include training on the mandatory Medicaid payments available to a pregnant woman through pregnancy and a 12-month postpartum period.