 OMMA Executive Director Adria Berry shares her takeaways from the recent town hall meetings in this video on our YouTube channel.
It’s been a week since we wrapped up the town halls. Staff at all levels have been reflecting on takeaways from these first-ever engagement sessions, and we are grateful for the constructive and rewarding dialogue that took place. We truly appreciated hearing directly from so many licensees.
Please take our short feedback survey to help us evaluate the meetings and take pointers for next time.
We’ll be in touch with attendees to follow up on specific questions and issues, but we wanted to share publicly our main takeaways and action items. There were several recurring themes throughout the sessions, including testing, expert consultation, licensing and more financial transparency. Most of these are long-term projects, but we feel confident there will be noticeable changes this year.
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Testing: OMMA will address lab test result inconsistencies by working with the legislature on establishing an internal QA lab.
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Expert consultation: OMMA will continue to engage with industry experts to ensure proper training and sound policies.
- Licensing: OMMA is working on digital patient licenses. We’re also going to reach out to legislators to discuss tying license expiration dates to application approval dates, and 90-day renewal application windows.
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Financials: We’ll be posting more detailed expenditure information to our website soon.
A common theme presented by OMMA staff was to contact your legislator. We have internal processes that can improve, and we will work on those, but we must follow the letter of the law. If you don’t agree with what a bill proposes, reach out to your legislator and share your story. The Oklahoma legislative session starts soon (Feb. 6), so now is a great time to contact them and have your voice and experience heard.
Last session, we rolled out a new page on our website that had legislative updates related to medical marijuana bills. Visit the Legislative Updates page at omma.ok.gov for a summary of this year's medical marijuana bills.
Lastly, there was an agreed-upon desire from town hall attendees to improve the touch points between OMMA and licensees. In the coming weeks, processes related to inspections, license processing, and customer service will undergo thorough quality improvement reviews and action plans. These are long-term projects, but you should begin noticing improvements soon after these reviews begin.
The next town halls will be in the fall, but we’ll be coming to you. We will visit twelve counties across the state this year, including several in rural Oklahoma. We will have more information to share once details have been finalized.
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