June 3, 2022

Last night, at 12:15 a.m., the NYS Assembly unanimously passed Assemblyman Bronson’s bill, A6008E, that addresses clinical scope of practice issues impacting Article 163 practitioners (MHCs, MFTs and Psychoanalysts).  As we reported earlier this week, the Senate had already passed S9449, a ‘same as’ version, sponsored by Senator Brouk.  The bill now awaits final action by the Governor.

The real work ahead is to analyze the various implications of this legislation.  We have pushed hard on OMH and OASAS to ready an analysis that clearly depicts what this means for our member agencies, and for the field in general. We will do the same, independent of the Offices, in an attempt to describe for our members the changes agreed upon by the professional associations that represent the three impacted Article 163 practitioner types:  LMHCs, LMFTs, and Psychoanalysts.  As you may have heard me discuss during previous NYS Council Public Policy calls, the practitioner groups were the primary stakeholders on this bill, and the negotiations were largely private, up until the bill draft was circulated late last week. The NYS Council sent our members a first blush analysis of the bill that ultimately passed, on Monday night.