{"id":38263,"date":"2025-03-31T16:16:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=38263"},"modified":"2025-03-31T16:16:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:16:14","slug":"licensing-reciprocity-advanced-for-marriage-and-family-therapists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=38263","title":{"rendered":"Licensing reciprocity advanced for marriage and family therapists"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill that would allow marriage and family therapists from other jurisdictions to more easily obtain a Nebraska license was expanded and given first-round approval March 31.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Dan Quick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Under LB257, sponsored by Grand Island Sen. Dan Quick, the state Department of Health and Human Services would be required to issue a license to a marriage and family therapist based on a licensure in another jurisdiction if that individual:
\n\u2022 has a valid, independent and unrestricted license in another state or territory;
\n\u2022 completes an application and pays all applicable fees; and
\n\u2022 has passed the Nebraska jurisprudence examination.<\/p>\n

Quick said current licensure is \u201cdisjointed\u201d across states and licensed marriage and family therapists who move jurisdictions often have to repeat classes or complete additional supervised hours in order to become licensed in their new state.<\/p>\n

Thirteen other states have passed bills similar to LB257, he said, including the neighboring states of Iowa and Kansas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a licensed MFT in another state and in good standing, then you should be able to move to Nebraska without taking extra steps to get licensed,\u201d Quick said. \u201cLB257 would attract additional therapeutic talent to Nebraska and address the mental health professional workforce shortage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the 42-0 adoption of a technical amendment from Quick, lawmakers also approved an amendment offered by Blair Sen. Ben Hansen.<\/p>\n

The Hansen amendment, adopted 43-0, would add amended provisions of his LB630 to the measure. Those provisions would expand the scope of practice for occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable patients to participate in activities of everyday life and engage in the occupations they want and need to, Hansen said, by helping them modify the job or their environment to achieve those objectives.<\/p>\n

Among other changes, the amendment would:
\n\u2022 allow an occupational therapist to apply physical agents and instrument-assisted modalities based on their training;
\n\u2022 prohibit an occupational therapist from using diathermy;
\n\u2022 allow an occupational therapist to perform dry needling only in accordance with the level of board-approved education and training successfully completed; and
\n\u2022 clarify that an occupational therapist may complete insertion and removal of cannulas for oxygen and adjustment of the rate of flow based on a physician order, but could not independently diagnose a medical condition or disease.<\/p>\n

Hansen said the changes had successfully completed DHHS\u2019s credentialing review process, also called the 407 process, in which three separate entities evaluate potential scope of practice changes to determine whether they would benefit public health and welfare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scope changes in the [amendment] reflect the most current evidence-based occupational therapy service provisions across practice areas with different populations,\u201d Hansen said.<\/p>\n

After adopting the amendment, lawmakers advanced LB257 to select file on a 43-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill that would allow marriage and family therapists from other jurisdictions to more easily obtain a Nebraska license was expanded and given first-round approval March 31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[181],"class_list":["post-38263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-human-services","tag-sen-dan-quick"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/LB257Quick3-31-25a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38263"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38266,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38263\/revisions\/38266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}