{"id":324347,"date":"2026-03-06T04:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T04:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/324347\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T04:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T04:35:07","slug":"bill-allowing-physician-assistants-to-practice-without-collaborative-agreement-with-physicians-passes-alaska-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/324347\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill allowing physician assistants to practice without collaborative agreement with physicians passes Alaska Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU \u2014 The Alaska Senate has passed a bill that would allow physician assistants with sufficient training to practice as members of a physician-led team, removing the state\u2019s current requirement that they work under a formal collaborative agreement with physicians.<\/p>\n

Supporters say the change would reduce administrative burdens that can delay and increase the cost of care. <\/p>\n

Senate Bill 89<\/a>, sponsored by Anchorage Democratic Sen. L\u00f6ki Tobin, passed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on Wednesday, with 18 votes in favor and two members absent. The bill would allow for any physician assistant that works at certain facilities to work without a collaborative plan under a specific physician. Those facilities include those directed by a licensed physician, those licensed by the Department of Health or those operated by the federal government or a tribal organization.<\/p>\n

Under current law, physician assistants in Alaska must operate under a collaborative plan with physicians. These plans outline the medical services a physician assistant can provide and require oversight from doctors.<\/p>\n

The Alaska State Medical Board regulates physician assistants and authorizes them to provide care only within the scope of their training<\/a>. Most physician assistants in Alaska work in family practice, though some are specially trained in particular fields. All care must be provided under a physician\u2019s license through a collaborative agreement that also requires a second, alternate physician to sign off.<\/p>\n

For some clinics, particularly in more remote areas, finding those physicians can be difficult.<\/p>\n

Mary Swain, CEO of Cama\u2019i Community Health Center in Bristol Bay, testified in support of the bill before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee in March 2025. Her practice employs two physicians to maintain collaborative plans for its physician assistants. She said neither of them lived in the community, and the primary physician lived out of state.<\/p>\n

Roughly 15% of physicians who hold collaborative agreements with Alaska-based physician assistants do not live in the state, according to Tobin. At the same time, Alaskans face some of the highest health care costs<\/a> in the nation.<\/p>\n

Jared Wallace, a physician assistant in Kenai and owner of Odyssey Family Practice, testified in support of the bill at a committee meeting in April.<\/p>\n

Wallace said maintaining collaborative agreements is one of the most difficult parts of running his clinic. He said he pays a collaborative physician about $2,000 per physician assistant per month, roughly $96,000 a year, simply to maintain the required agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my experience, a collaborative plan does not improve nor ensure good patient care,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cInstead, it is a barrier in providing good health care in a rural community where access is limited, is a threat that delicately suspends my practice in place, and if severed, the 6,000 patients that I care for would lose access to (their) primary provider and become displaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

A previous version of the legislation was modeled on a structure where physician assistants could apply for independent licensure if they obtained at least 4,000 hours of postgraduate clinical practice under a supervision of a physician. <\/p>\n

Opposition largely came from physicians, who testified that physician assistants do not receive the same depth of training as doctors.<\/p>\n

Dr. Nicholas Cosentino, an internal medicine physician, testified in opposition to the bill last April. He said that medical school training provides crucial experience in diagnosing complex cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not infrequent that you get a patient that you\u2019re not exactly sure you know what\u2019s going on, and you have to fall back on your scientific background, the four years of medical school training, the countless hours of residency to come up with that differential, to think critically and come up with a plan for that patient,\u201d Cosentino said. <\/p>\n

Other states have moved to allow independent licensure for physician assistants, following different formulas. In North Dakota, physician assistants are required to complete 4,000 hours of clinical practice under a supervision of a physician, and Utah requires 10,000 hours, while Wyoming does not set a specific statewide minimum hour requirement.<\/p>\n

In part based on input from the Alaska State Medical Association, lawmakers in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee removed the hourly and licensure specifications of the bill, instead allowing physician assistants to work without operating under a specific collaborative agreement, but not allowing for independent licensure. <\/p>\n

The bill now heads to House committees before a potential vote on the House floor.<\/p>\n

[Correction: The original version of the story referenced an outdated version of the bill, and incorrectly reported that the bill based eligibility for independent licensure on an hour-based training system under a physician. The current version of the bill authorizes physician assistants to work without operating under a specific collaborative agreement, but does not allow for independent licensure.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JUNEAU \u2014 The Alaska Senate has passed a bill that would allow physician assistants with sufficient training to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-324347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}