Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 2770 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to establish the Public Health Nursing Services Special Fund for case management services in the Public Health Nursing Branch Program to receive and expend Medicaid funds for medically fragile children under the age of twenty-one with complex medical conditions.

Your Committee received testimony in favor of this measure from the University of Hawaii, Department of Health, Department of Human Services, Kapiolani Medical Center, and Hawaii Government Employees Association.

Your Committee finds that there is a critical need for comprehensive case management services for medically fragile children or children with complex medical conditions with or without technological devices. The Public Health Nursing case management services for the families of medically fragile children with complex medical conditions are tremendously vital to support and strengthen families in caring for their children at home. It empowers families, service providers, and schools to work together to meet the needs of the medically fragile child and family, and it meets the requirements of a system of care that is collaborative, coordinated, family centered, and community based.

Your Committee has made nonsubstantive, technical amendments to this measure.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health and Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2770, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2770, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.