Hawaii Academy of Physician Assistants

June, 2010

HAPA Elections will be held in July.  Members should expect election ballots in late June.  If you would like to volunteer and want to be nominated for a position please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 808-432-8334.

Open positions will include president elect, secretary, treasurer and two director at large positions.

Assessing Hawaii's Health Care Work Force. What role do PAs play?

If you are a PA practicing in Hawaii Please complete our ONLINE SURVEY.
There will be a Physician Workforce Summit on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 and, ideally, we would like to get this information
to Dr. Kelley Withey, M.D., PhD by the summit date.  The information will remain strictly confidential and will help us better understand the demographics of physician assistants in Hawaii. See the details in the related article below.

The 2010 Hawaii Legislative session ended and there were no bills passed affecting physician assistant practice.  HAPA elected not pursue passage of SB 1610 due to the language of the bill.  SB 2204 proposed that the Hawaii Medical Board establish a drug formulary advisory subcommittee for each non-physician health care practice whose licensed practitioners are granted prescriptive authority by law.  This had the potential to impose significant restrictions on physician assistant practice and was opposed by HAPA.  Fortunately, the bill was held in committee (read more)

but can be revisited in the 2011 session.  The bill would have required HMB to establish sub-committes for the following: Naturopathic physicians;

Advanced practice registered nurses with prescriptive authority; Pharmacists; Physician assistants; and any other licensed profession that is granted prescriptive authority by law.  HAPA's legislative representative had the opportunity discuss our opposition with the bill's sponsor.  It seems obvious there that would have been widespread opposition to this bill.

The primary focus of the legislative session this year,however, was dealing with the state's financial affairs. For this reason, many unrelated bills were either held or simply not heard at all.

HAPA worked with the AAPA to draft an alternative to SB 1610. This would amend nursing HRS by adding physician assistants to the definition of providers who can write orders, within appropriate scope of practice, to be executed by nurses.  Although it is clearly stated within HAR (Hawaii Administrative Rules) that PAs can write orders, this would further clarify that these orders can be executed by nurse and indemnify nurses.  Some hospitals (Queens) still require orders written by PAs to be written as verbal orders from supervising physicians.  This decreases PA efficiency and unnecessarily restricts PA practice.