Additional Requirements for Surgical Assistants and Technologists Vetoed

On August 17, 2018, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed updates to the Registered Surgical Assistant and Registered Surgical Technologist Title Protection Act, calling the proposed changes a needless expansion of bureaucratic requirements without any demonstrable improvements in patient safety.

Surgical assistants and surgical technologists in Illinois already enjoy title protection if they register with the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR). Only those surgical assistants (SAs) and surgical technologists (STs) who register with IDFPR may hold themselves out as Registered Surgical Assistants and Registered Surgical Technologists. Registration is voluntary; those who register receive title protection, although unregistered SAs and STs may still practice. In many hospitals and ASCs, registration is a hiring criteria.

This year’s proposed update to the Act would have added additional certification requirements for SAs and STs to renew their registration with IDFPR. Governor Rauner viewed the proposed ongoing certification requirement as simply a requirement for SAs and STs to maintain membership in a private association, with no corresponding safety improvements for Illinois patients. Writes Rauner:

All this legislation will accomplish is increasing the direct costs for professionals seeking to renew their license, which will indirectly be passed on to consumers in the form of even higher healthcare costs, while supporting a private organization’s certification program that may not even relate to the practice area of a given surgical assistant.

Specifically, this legislation will create at least 80,000 hours of additional unnecessary compliance work by members of this industry and over $1.2 million of indirect costs over the next 10 years, on top of further restricting entry into the labor market for new workers.

While the certification requirements in law may make sense for the initial registration of surgical assistants, the reality of the highly-regulated environments in which they work makes statutorily required maintenance of this paper certification redundant. Instead of perpetuating barriers to work like this, Illinois should be making our economy and workforce more agile and responsive to the actual needs of our workplaces.

AORN will continue to monitor allied healthcare provider legislation. For questions or more information on getting involved with AORN Government Affairs, contact Danielle Glover, Associate Director of Government Affairs.