AZ Governor Hobbs Signs HB 2025 - scope of practice; medical assistants
AZ is the first state in the nation to allow for MA’s to participate in catheter care under GENERAL supervision.
April 1, 2025
Earlier this year, Drs. Jason Jameson and Chris Twiss testified at the AZ State Legislature, House Health Committee. The result was a 11-1 vote to move HB 2025 bill forward to allow medical assistants to provide catheter care in our urology practices. Yesterday, the bill was signed by the governor!
This is a major win for AZUS, ArMA, the AUA state advocacy committee, and all Arizona urologists.
This is also an example of advocacy in action for urology in Arizona and the AZUS wishes to thank all those who made this possible, including the collaborating advocacy efforts of the Arizona Medical Association and especially AZUS leadership from Dr. Jason Jameson, who will be the newly elected ArMA President on April 5 at the ArMA annual meeting (his term officially begins July 1). Congratulations!
Background comments from Dr. Jason Jameson
On March 31, 2025, Governor Hobbs signed HB 2025 which expands the scope of practice for medical assistants to participate in urinary catheter care. As we know, this is a very niche topic. But it came about when the Arizona Medical Board updated their website and for the first time, stated that medical assistants were not allowed to place or remove urinary catheters. This became very disruptive to urology practices in AZ who routinely had trained and supervised MA’s to provide this care. Some practices, especially solo practices, usually only have MA’s as clinical staff. So if patients needed care and the doctor wasn’t available, then patients would be sent to emergency rooms for simple catheter care, which was totally unnecessary. Urologists started voicing concern, and the Arizona Urologic Society reached out to ArMA about this issue. Amanda Sheinson, ArMA Director of Government Relations, assisted in identifying the options, and with further collaboration with the American Urological Association resulted in a letter to the Arizona Medical Board to reconsider. After not getting further traction with this approach, it was decided to develop a legislative strategy, which included building support from Representative Selina Bliss, the current chair of House Health Committee, who offered to introduce the bill. We had written and personal testimony from three urologists, and the bill sailed through the entire process and was signed by the governor on Monday. AZ is the first state in the nation to allow for MA’s to participate in catheter care under GENERAL supervision. While this was a fairly straightforward issue, and eventual solution, imagine if there was no organized medical advocacy. No resource for physicians to fix this problem. If there was no state urology association, no state medical association to lead a complex legislative process - with legislators who have no healthcare background but are voting on issues that affect individual patients immensely - it really is a scary thought to think about what our healthcare would like without these very important organizations. We CANNOT take them for granted!