Earlier this year we held a member meeting to discuss Buoy’s law that requires veterinarians to disclose side-effects.
Members came back with many questions that indicated that the law as written is ambiguous. For example, a last-minute change to the bill might be seen by some as requiring informed-consent on every single medication used during surgery. However until this change, the bill always applied just to medications that were prescribed or given to the owner to take home.
We believe we have a clear path to getting a new bill through the legislature before the law goes into effect. This would both clarify that the law only applies to prescribing, dispensing or otherwise providing the medication to the client to be taken home with them.
The bill would also extend the period allowed for the development of adequate regulations until summer 2024. This is because the range of questions that emerged from our members demonstrated that care is needed in developing regulations that clarify details of the interpretation of the law, so that veterinarians know how to comply.
We have provided your questions to the New York State Department of Education to help them draft regulations. If the law were to go into effect that is far little time for the drafting of regulations, public comment, redrafting and then giving veterinarians adequate time to comply with those regulations.
The one down-side is that it means that currently it is very hard to answer questions about Buoy’s law. The draft regulations have not been released, and we have confidence that our bill pushing back implementation will be successful.
Once we have a bill published, we will put out a call-to-action to contact your legislators and legislators on the Higher Education Committees.
The link below will take you to the recording of the webinar we ran in January on efficient ways to comply with the new law. It will also address some questions members asked about the new law.
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