Chiropractic Scope of Practice 2025 Legislation Update
A lot has changed since the 1960’s. One thing that hasn’t changed is the chiropractic scope of practice, which is why this is one of the legislative priorities for the New York State Chiropractic Association on behalf of the chiropractic profession.
This updated scope of practice bill has been a joint legislative priority between the New York State Chiropractic Association and the New York Chiropractic Council since 2015, when the Joint Legislative Task Force was formed and began to discuss amending numerous sections of Article 132 of the Education Law to update and modernize a variety of provisions related to the chiropractic scope of practice. Over many months of meetings and negotiations nuances in language and punctuation were hammered out between both associations. The goal was to create a bill that would serve all members of the profession regardless of philosophy, or practice style, and would allow NY to become a state where graduates would want to stay and thrive.
To this end, we worked to create language to address current education as well as future advances in healthcare. Representatives from both associations agreed with the language of the final bill. Both associations began to support and promote this legislation after it was introduced at the end of the 2016 legislative session. During the 2023 legislative session, NYSCA worked with the Council on some language modification after the Council raised concerns that the current language regarding performance of x-rays wasn’t clear enough.
For the 2025 legislative session, the bill numbers are A4706 / S5860. One other change for this session is that we have a new Assembly bill sponsor. Our original bill sponsor, Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell retired at the end of 2024. We cannot thank him enough for his leadership and support of the profession over the years. The new Assembly sponsor of this legislation is Assemblymember Sarah Clark. The continuing Senate sponsor is Senator Andrew Gounardes.
We are excited to have Assemblymember Clark and Senator Gounardes advocate on our behalf for the update to the chiropractic scope of practice, and while the New York Chiropractic Council decided late last year to call off discussions about unity with us, we will continue to work with them through the Joint Legislative Task Force on this important legislative priority for the profession and our patients.
The NYSCA Board of Directors and government relations team have been hard at work building a coalition of partners to support our efforts and talking with groups that had concerns to ensure that this important legislation will pass both houses of the legislature. And, while the scope of practice bill is our main legislative priority, we are also working on important legislation to limit the lookback period for insurance overpayment recovery from health care providers to three months; authorize certain licensed health service professionals, including chiropractors, to form limited liability companies with other licensed health and mental health providers; and, require any insurer that pays a provider with a credit card, virtual credit card or electronic funds transfer, to notify the provider in advance of the fees and provide an alternative payment method that does not impose fees.
Stay tuned for additional information and updates on how you can help our legislative efforts.
