The 2024 legislative session began Monday, Jan. 8. This year’s session is the second in the two-year biennium and will last for 60 days, making it a “short” session. Our Government Affairs team is already hard at work reviewing the first bills of session, as the pace in Olympia continues to be fast.
WSHA’s top budget priorities this session focus on increasing post-acute care for complex-discharge patients, improving timeliness of guardianship proceedings and availability of guardians for hospitalized patients, and supporting low-volume hospital labor and delivery. Our top policy priorities focus on ensuring access to care is not threatened by reductions in payments to hospitals, allowing hospitals to continue to merge and affiliate to maintain access to care in their communities, and supporting innovations to improve workforce shortages. Several high-priority bills have already had public hearings at the committee level.
Your engagement is crucial to our legislative success, so if you haven’t already, we encourage you to sign up for our Inside Olympia newsletter and our advocacy network. These are the primary vehicles we will use throughout session to keep you informed of the latest updates and opportunities to get involved.
You can always read more about our legislative priorities on our website and read more about this week’s action in the latest edition of Inside Olympia.
Sincerely,
Chelene Whiteaker
WSHA Senior Vice President, Government Affairs
chelenew@wsha.org
