SB 216 Montana Senate · 2025 Regular Session

Creating the Montana physicians' workforce investment act

SB 216 creates Montana's Physicians' Workforce Investment Act, establishing a task force to administer grants for health sector facilities (like hospitals) to launch or expand residency and fellowship programs. The grant program provides up to $2 million per facility to support new graduate medical education programs, requiring applicants to submit accreditation plans, 2-year financial projections, and 5-year sustainability strategies. This directly affects Montana hospitals seeking to train medical graduates (those with medical degrees but without residency completion) and aims to address physician shortages by increasing training opportunities. The task force must report annually on grant usage, program locations, specialty fields, and accreditation status to the legislature.

Issues: ✓ Healthcare

Bill status died 3 of 5 stages cleared

Introduction

Jan 2025

Committee Review

Feb 2025

Senate Passage

Feb 2025

House Passage

Governor

Introduced Jan 27, 2025 Last action May 23, 2025

Maddy AI version diff · 5 comparisons

What changed between versions

SB0216_2(5).pdf → SB0216_2(6).pdf · 3 edits

MINOR

The bill amends the composition of the Montana Graduate Medical Education Task Force by clarifying member qualifications and correcting a numbering error in the appointment list. Specifically, it adds an experience requirement for the higher education commissioner's designee and clarifies that only one representative is needed from hospital facilities, despite an earlier line suggesting two. These changes aim to ensure the task force has relevant expertise and a clear structure for appointing representatives.

Scope change

The bill's scope regarding the task force's membership criteria was modified to include specific experience requirements for certain appointees and to clarify the number of representatives from the health sector.

REQUIREMENT

Added a requirement that the higher education commissioner's designee must have experience in graduate medical education.

Corrected the appointment list to specify that only one representative is needed from a hospital or health sector facility, removing conflicting language that suggested two.

TECHNICAL

Fixed a formatting error where the list of appointed individuals was incorrectly numbered with both (c) and (D) instead of a continuous sequence.

Floor votes · Senate Feb 26, 2025

How they voted

21–1

Passed

Total votes 22

Feb 26, 2025

D Democratic8

8 Yea

100% Yea

R Republican14

13 Yea 1 Nay

92% Yea

Vote distribution

All Yea All Nay Mixed No data

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Amendments

Feb 26, 2025

Senate · Passed

Senate Vote: pass (21-1)

senate

Feb 26, 2025

Amended

(S) Tabled in Committee - (S) Finance and Claims

upper

Feb 19, 2025

Committee

(S) Rereferred to Committee - (S) Finance and Claims

upper

Feb 15, 2025

Upper · Passed

(S) Committee Report - (S) Public Health, Welfare and Safety

upper

Feb 14, 2025

Upper · Passed

(S) Committee Executive Action - (S) Public Health, Welfare and Safety

upper

Jan 28, 2025

Committee

(S) Referred to Committee - (S) Public Health, Welfare and Safety

upper

Jan 27, 2025

Introduced

(S) Introduced

upper

1 primary · 0 co-sponsors