Chiropractors' effort to get the green light to "dry needle" was met with some critics trying to poke holes in the proposed legislation.
Members of the Senate Health Policy Committee debated SB 1474 at length before voting 9-1 to pass the bill.
Filed by GOP Sen. Jay Trumbull, the bill expands chiropractors' scope of practice by authorizing them to perform dry needling, a technique that involves inserting thin needles into or near trigger points in the muscle to relieve pain and improve range of motion. The bill also creates a licensure pathway for chiropractic physicians who obtained their bachelor's degree outside the United States to practice in Florida.
The provision would allow Amanda Sellers, a chiropractor from Longwood, to set up shop. Sellers, who started to cry during her testimony, said there were "many others" facing similar challenges. Sellers received her undergraduate degree from the University of West Ontario Canada and subsequently went to chiropractic college in Florida in 2016.
After graduating and passing her boards she moved to Reno, Nevada, where she practiced until she and her husband decided to return to Florida to be closer to family.
However, when she submitted her licensure application to the Florida Chiropractic Board this year, she was denied. She said she was told by the board at a Nov. 9, 2023, meeting that she would have to go back to college and receive her undergraduate degree.
Committee members were sympathetic to Sellers' predicament. More than one committee member was irked, though, that the dry needling issue was comingled with the fix for the Florida chiropractor.
"There are two really large concepts here, both with weight of (their) own. Why did you combine this in one piece of legislation?" Sen. Tracie Davis asked Florida Chiropractic Association (FCA) General Counsel Kimberly Driggers.
"Because the Board of Chiropractic Medicine asked us to fix it in a chiropractic bill," Driggers said. "Rather than separate them we wanted to fix the issues together. Those issues were both the result of that Nov. 9 meeting."
The FCA petitioned the board for a determination on dry needling and whether it was within the chiropractic scope of practice to do so. Facing opposition at the board meeting, the FCA ultimately withdrew the petition.
While laws governing chiropractic medicine don't allow for dry needling, there is a rule that allows athletic trainers to dry needle under the supervision of a physician. Riggers told the committee members that under statutes chiropractors are considered physicians.
The bill heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Health and Human Services, which is chaired by Sen. Gayle Harrell. And while Harrell voted to support the bill this week, she is not a fan of scope-of-practice expansions.
This isn't the first tussle over dry needling and what health care practitioners are authorized to conduct the procedures. After an unsuccessful attempt to add dry needling services through rule, the physical therapists in 2020 successfully convinced the Legislature to put it into their practice act.
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