SB 1626 allocates state funds to the Healthcare Education Loan Repayment Program, helping healthcare professionals repay student loans. It directly affects licensed healthcare workers, particularly those serving in underserved areas or specific roles like nurses, doctors, or mental health providers. The bill’s key mechanism is providing financial support to reduce graduates' education debt, making it easier for them to enter or remain in the healthcare workforce. This is a funding measure, not a new policy.
Requires the Developmental Disabilities Division of the Department of Health to amend its eligibility criteria for the home and community-based services Medicaid waiver to include individuals having an intellectual or a developmental disability and a comorbid mental illness. Appropriates funds.
Authorizes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to utilize student education partnerships to increase the amount of mental health care providers in correctional facilities across the State. Appropriates funds.
Creates a framework for the licensure of rural emergency hospitals by the Department of Health. Provides for the continuation of Medicaid policy protections for hospitals transitioning to a rural emergency hospital designation.
Establishes a two-year digital youth mental health platform pilot project under which the child and adolescent mental health division of the department of health develops and makes publicly available a digital platform providing tools and resources designed to help young people address and manage mental health challenges.
Amends the definition of "dangerous to self". Defines the terms "gravely disabled" and "psychiatric deterioration". Broadens the term of "imminently dangerous to self and others". Increases the maximum period of emergency hospitalization.
SB 967 requires Medicaid and private health insurance plans to cover intravenous ketamine therapy for treating depression. The bill mandates this coverage for eligible patients and allocates state funding to support the program. It directly affects individuals seeking this specific depression treatment and insurers who must now include it in covered services. The policy change creates a new requirement for health coverage without specifying additional eligibility criteria beyond the therapy's use for depression.
Adopts the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act (2023), as modified, to replace existing chapters related to advance health care directives and advance mental health care directives. (CD1)
Beginning with the 2027-2028 school year, requires each public school in the State, including charter schools, to employ, or retain under contract, at least 1 mental health professional for every 250 students enrolled, subject to certain conditions. Requires the Department of Education to submit a progress report to the Legislature no later than 20 days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2026. Appropriates moneys for the Department of Education to contract for mental health professionals and to establish an unspecified number of fulltime equivalent mental health professional positions within the Department of Education. Declares that the general fund expenditure ceiling is exceeded.
Adds psychology, physician assistant, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, clinical social worker, rehabilitation counselor, and school counselor students to the definition of "eligible student" under the qualifications for the healthcare preceptor tax credit. Amends the definition of "preceptor" by adding psychologists, physician assistants, marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, clinical social workers, rehabilitation counselors, and school counselors to the list of preceptors eligible to receive the tax credit. Applies to taxable years beginning after 12/31/2025.
