News & Announcements
IASCA Presents at June ASTC Licensing Board Meeting
posted: June 20, 2018
On June 13th, 2018 IASCA took the opportunity to attend the June meeting of the Illinois ASTC Licensing Board.
The meeting began with discussion of the board’s ongoing administrative business, before gaining a quorum that allowed the board to move onto substantive matters.
This business began with presentation of the ASTC Medicare survey data gathered from March 1st 2018 to May 22nd 2018. This survey 126 of 145 licensed ASTCs in Illinois were Medicare certified, that 5 licensed pregnancy termination centers existed in Illinois, and there was no change in number of facilities licensed or certified by Medicare over the survey period.
Discussion then moved to the board’s effort to update the state’s ASTC record retention program. Earlier in the year, the legislature indicated that it would provide no additional guidance on record retention for requirements. The board debated what the appropriate length of retention was for patient records. Options for 5, 7, and 10 years were discussed. Some members of the board were in favor of maintaining records in accordance with hospitals own retention policy, while other felt this was unnecessary. Due to the current stance of the Governor’s office on regulations, the matter was tabled until January 2019 when the political environment may be less challenging.
This was followed up by investigation and debate of IASCA’s own sponsored proposal to change the rules surrounding continuous presence of physicians in a facility until all patients have been medically discharged. IASCA proposed that once patients have met certain stringent level of care criteria, physicians should be allowed to depart the premises. Some minor technical concerns were raised about IASCA’s proposed language, which staff will work with the board to revise. Overall members of the board were supportive, although the board lost its quorum before substantive action could be taken. IASCA will revise its proposal, and take the matter up again at the next ASTC licensing board meeting.