A bill requiring young athletes who sustain concussions to get approval from an expert physician before returning to play will head to the Senate floor for discussion after being voted out of committee.
During a Senate Committee on Public Health, Human Services and Revenue executive session Thursday, legislators voted to adopt a substitute amendment on a 3-2 party line vote, changing who would be required to implement a concussion policy and the kind of policy they are allowed to implement.
Under the amendment authored by Sen. Pam Galloway, R-Wausau, only public and private schools would have to implement concussion policies for athletes, whereas club sports would not.
The amendment also only requires schools create a concussion policy, but not necessarily the one developed in the bill by the legislators.
Sen. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said her main concern with Galloway’s amendment was its exclusion of requirements on club sports organizations for developing a concussion policy.
“My concern is there are many children in club sports and you’re holding them to a different standard of concussion evaluation,” Shilling said. “It narrows the bill’s scope, and it’s not the best direction to go.”
Shilling commended the groups supporting the bill and said the bill addressed the important issue of informing students about the dangers of brain injuries.
Galloway shared Shilling’s concerns but said many of the club sport organizations already have policies in place for dealing with concussions.
According to Galloway, the original draft of the bill was overly broad and what she wanted to do with the amendment was create some flexibility.
“One of the things I learned at medical school is when you leave medical, everything you know is already out of date,” Galloway said. “Our understanding of diseases change. I don’t think [the bill] allowed enough flexibility at the level of the school districts if our understanding of concussions were to change.”
She also said her amendment changed the bill’s definition so an expert physician would have to to inspect the concussion or head injury to ensure lesser known symptoms were not missed.
Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, said the difficulty of this bill would be finding the appropriate balance.
“We’re trying to find a balance between creating awareness and making sure children in these settings are taken care of, while at the same time not burdening school districts by making something so prescriptive for them to follow,” Vukmir said.
Vukmir confirmed she would be voting for the bill but said she would be bringing up an amendment when the bill went to the Senate floor.
She added she would also like to include language allowing other health care providers to examine the injury, such as nurses, athletic trainers or physical therapists.
The Wisconsin Medical Society endorsed the bill without the amendment added in a statement Wednesday, and also advocated for the use of the Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing program. ImPACT uses a computer-based testing program for management of sports-related concussions.
According to UW Health’s website, a large number of sport teams, including the Green Bay Packers, the Milwaukee Brewers and the University of Wisconsin Badgers, use ImPACT for concussion assessment.
