We owe a big round of applause to our Licensing & Rulemaking teams- who’ve spent the better part of 2 years working with hundreds of folks from numerous associations and licensed facilities as part of our regulatory reform initiative. 

This afternoon we filed an overhaul of 20 Articles of regulations for healthcare institutions and behavioral health service agencies including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient surgery and treatment centers, recovery care, adult therapeutic foster homes, assisted living, home health agencies, hospice facilities, DUI services; residential treatment centers and midwives.  A big thanks to the entire Licensing, Rulemaking, and Behavioral Health teams for making this effort a success.  These new rules will be driving Arizona toward better public health outcomes for years to come. 

All the rules have an October 1 implementation date, although most of the midwifery regulations kick in right away.  The delayed implementation date gives: 1) our licensees a chance to learn the new rules before they’re expected to comply with them; 2) our surveyors time to learn the new rules so we can survey to them properly; and 3) AHCCCS the time they need to figure out some reimbursement issues.  

The next step is to prepare for implementation of the new rules.  Check out our implementation website for the nuts and bolts of the upcoming implementation activities.  The state budget gave us extended “exempt” rulemaking authority through April of 2014…  meaning that we’ll be able to make additional revisions as we implement the new regulations and find areas that can use tweaking.