Legislative Advocacy in Action in Illinois

The Illinois Chiropractic Society (ICS) is proud to announce the enactment of several legislative initiatives this year. Recently, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed four ICS legislative initiatives into law:

• Delegation of Duties. For many years chiropractic physicians had not been given specific statutory authority to delegate tasks and duties to personnel. Illinois chiropractic physicians had received approval to delegate, although recently conflicting, from the department but not specifically in statute. Now, following passage this year of Public Act 96-0618, a chiropractic physician has the explicit statutory authority to "delegate tasks or duties to licensed or unlicensed personnel when the tasks or duties fall within the scope of practice, as well as education, training, or experience of the delegating physician, and within the context of a physician-patient relationship. In addition, a licensed health care professional must be on site to provide assistance." Effective January 1, 2010.
  


• Certify Teacher and Student Sick Leave. The ICS also helped restored the authority of Illinois chiropractic physicians to certify student and teacher sick leave through the enactment of Public Act 96-0367. Governor Quinn signed the legislation into law, enabling school boards to accept "sick notes" from chiropractic physicians.
  


• State Board of Health. Illinois has added a chiropractic physician representative to the Illinois State Board of Health through an ICS initiative resulting in Illinois Public Act 96-0455. The board of health assumes the leadership role in advising the director of the Illinois Department of Health in meeting needs assessment, statewide health objectives, policy development, and assurance of access to necessary services.
  


• Assisted Living Facility Access. The ICS was able to help provide chiropractic physicians the same level of access to patients in assisted living facilities as medical doctors and doctors of osteopathy. Prior to Public Act 96-0353, MDs and DOs had been exempted from requirements of the Illinois Assisted Living Act. Now doctors of chiropractic also receive the same unrestricted access to patients in assisted living facilities by virtue of their licensure under the Medical Practice Act of 1987.

"The ICS had an incredibly successful year this legislative season. It is very gratifying to see the years of hard work by the ICS staff and our membership rewarded with these significant changes," said Dr. Monica Schnack, ICS president.

For further details about any of these new pro-chiropractic laws in Illinois, please contact the Illinois Chiropractic Society's Department of Governmental Relations at 1-800-424-0121 or online at www.ilchiro.org.

Source: Illinois Chiropractic Society.