Pennsylvania is in a mental health crisis. We have too few health professionals – in rural and urban areas alike – leading to long wait times to see a provider or receive mental health services.  While we have made some improvements to telehealth and access to mental health care, more must be done to meet the needs of Pennsylvanians.

Billing for services provided by trainees is often not allowed by Medicaid and private insurance companies. This presents a significant challenge to training programs that offer needed services to the public yet must find other ways to support the costs associated with running a quality training program. This is a key issue for health service psychology in the context of efforts to mitigate the psychology internship imbalance.

One way to alleviate this burden is to provide associate-level licensure to doctoral psychology students while they are earning their supervised clinical hours. That’s why Representative Boyd plans to introduce legislation that would create the Psychological Associate license, which would enhance access to mental health services by increasing employment opportunities for doctoral-level psychology students.  These doctoral level students have already completed their educational requirements and are working under direct clinical supervision towards meeting their internship and post-doctoral hours. Currently, at least 3,000 hours of clinical experience are needed before these doctoral students are licensed as psychologists.
 
Licensing these practitioners will ensure patients have access to quality care.  Not only would psychological associate licensees have oversight by the State Board of Psychology, but holding a license may enable them to obtain insurance reimbursement for the services they provide while working towards their full license.

Please urge your representative to contact Representative Boyd’s office to add their name as a co-sponsor to this important legislation.