On July 13th, 2009, Governor Jan Brewer signed the abortion omnibus bill into law. To read the full text, click here. One of the provisions of this law is that the patient cannot be charged at any visit where abortion is discussed until after the patient’s 24 hour “reflection period” has passed. The 24 hours does not begin until after the patient receives state mandated counseling information. If you are not equipped to do the counseling yourself, it will be more than 24 hours until the patient can be billed. As is often the case when the government legislates how we deliver healthcare, this provision has some unintended effects.

• If your patient becomes pregnant while taking medications that may be harmful to the fetus, you cannot charge for any visit that involves a mention of abortion until 24 hours after the patient receives state mandated counseling information.
• If a patient discovers that she is pregnant at an emergency room or urgent care visit and the patient requests abortion information, that patient may not be billed until 24 hours after the patient receives state mandated counseling information.
• If your patient discovers that she is pregnant at a preoperative screening visit, and requests abortion information, she cannot be billed for that visit until 24 hours after she receives state mandated counseling information.

As it is currently worded, this bill makes any visit that involves the mentioning of abortion, an abortion visit. This law also applies regardless of whether you respond to a patient’s request for abortion information. And finally, if a patient requests abortion information and does NOT have an abortion, then your patient can only be billed after you determine that she has not and will not have an abortion.

If you believe that this legislation may adversely impact the care that you give, contact us at info@tucsonwomenscenter.com to find out what you can do to stop this legislation from going into effect.