August 17, 2018

To the Honorable Members of

The Illinois Senate,

100th General Assembly:

Today, I return Senate Bill 2419 with specific recommendations for change.

This legislation updates the certification standards for surgical assistants to become registered to practice in Illinois and adds additional certification requirements for the renewal of this registration.

Maintaining a safe and effective healthcare environment is of the utmost importance. However, this legislation only serves to needlessly expand bureaucratic requirements without any demonstrable improvements in patient safety.

The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation is well-equipped to regulate this profession in a way that protects the health and safety of Illinois patients without needing to enforce membership in a private association. There has been an average of less than 1 disciplinary action per year against this profession since 2010, and surgical assistants already operate under the direction supervision of licensed physicians. All this legislation will accomplish is increasing the direct costs for professionals seeking to renew their license, which will indirectly be passed on to consumers in the form of even higher healthcare costs, while supporting a private organization’s certification program that may not even relate to the practice area of a given surgical assistant.

Specifically, this legislation will create at least 80,000 hours of additional unnecessary compliance work by members of this industry and over $1.2 million of indirect costs over the next 10 years, on top of further restricting entry into the labor market for new workers.

While the certification requirements in law may make sense for the initial registration of surgical assistants, the reality of the highly-regulated environments in which they work makes statutorily required maintenance of this paper certification redundant. Instead of perpetuating barriers to work like this, Illinois should be making our economy and workforce more agile and responsive to the actual needs of our workplaces.

Therefore, pursuant to Section 9(e) of Article IV of the Illinois Constitution of 1970, I hereby return Senate Bill 2419, entitled “AN ACT concerning regulation”, with the following specific recommendations for change:

By deleting page 2, line 10 through page 3 line 23.

With these changes, Senate Bill 2419 will have my approval. I respectfully request your concurrence.

Sincerely,

Bruce Rauner

GOVERNOR