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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

New Bill Could Speed Up Access to Doctors

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Tuesday, April 26, 2016   

DENVER - Community Health Centers in Colorado are struggling to recruit and retain doctors, but they could catch a break if a new bill in the state Legislature becomes law.

House Bill 1047 would speed up the process for putting out-of-state doctors to work by entering into an interstate agreement, or compact. Under current rules, said Dr. Joan Bothner, chief medical officer at Children's Hospital Colorado, doctors already licensed in other states have to wait months before seeing patients in Colorado.

"So, it's important for the state of Colorado really to be able to take care of both our own constituents and then, also, the constituents in the states surrounding us," she said. "Especially as rural as some of our regions of the state are, sometimes it's easier for physicians who are licensed in other states to come into Colorado to provide that care."

HB 1047 cleared the House with a unanimous vote, and could go before the full Senate as early as this week.

Bothner noted that physicians working in Colorado still would have to meet the state's license requirements. Twelve states already have joined the Interstate Physician Compact. Joining would help families in rural states get care through rapidly expanding telehealth technologies, she said, adding that state borders don't always work when children need to see a specialist.

"It really allows those kids to stay local and stay home," she said, "so we can work with their primary-care physicians in their home communities, and our specialists can come on board and help out with the good care that those kids need."

A recent survey by the National Association of Community Health Centers found that 95 percent of the nation's health centers have at least one clinical vacancy, and filling all those vacancies would allow 2 million more patients to access care. Colorado's Community Health Network clinics are currently short 32 doctors. The survey results are online at nachc.com.


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