Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

If I had one wish for the future of health and health care, it would be a simple one. Lawmakers and agency policymakers would use evidence to develop public policy. Policy decisions and resource allocation would be driven by data and prioritized by long-term return on investment.

The Pew Foundation and its allies of convenience want the Legislature to green light “dental therapists.” They say this will improve dental health care for poor and rural Arizonans. Yet these dental therapists, empowered to do irreversible surgeries such as pulling teeth, will have minimal training – nothing at all like what dentists, pediatric dentists and oral surgeons receive before they see their first patient.

Nurses exist to help patients – that’s our top priority. So, when we look at the state of health care in 2017, it’s through the lens of whether it is getting easier or harder for patients to access the care they need. The answer is, it’s a mixed bag. Arizona nurses are playing a more prominent role in providing safe, quality care. But not all of the news is good; uncertainty swirls around health care policy in Arizona and nationally.

It may sound ridiculous to remind everyone that we only have one body, with many parts. Yet we’ve created a system of health care that serves distinct parts carved out from each other – mind, body, teeth. This fragmentation has created a maze of confusion.

A search of the popular magazine “Psychology Today” revealed that many professionals in Arizona who are not certified continue to advertise art therapy services. Of 16 therapists that listed an art therapy specialty or claimed to be trained in art therapy, only five had the required board certification.

Our state has already enabled innovative care models, such as Direct Primary Care practices and Health Care Sharing Ministries. By lifting the regulatory burdens that create barriers to health care choice, these models have met the needs of thousands in Arizona, and the number of participants is growing annually.

Called KidsCare in Arizona, CHIP now covers more than 23,000 children across our state. It has helped bring the rate of Arizona children with health insurance to a historic high at 92.7 percent. Instead of celebrating, families have been thrown into uncertainty as the fate of their children’s health care hangs in the balance.

The sunrise review process is one of the more obscure proceedings at the Arizona Legislature, but it’s also the battleground for recurring turf wars.

We must pay more to attract physicians and specialists who may otherwise prefer to work in the Phoenix or Tucson areas. Personnel expenses now account for 75 percent of our total operational costs, and we have been recruiting for another primary care physician to join our team for the past two years.

Only four women have served on the Arizona Supreme Court. But Justice Ann Scott Timmer found the one silver lining to the state’s gross underrepresentation at its highest court: “The good news is I’m in the top five of all time.”