November 6, 2006
Sidebar: Push for New Lab Training Money Falters
While pursuing allied health funding increases, clinical laboratory and pathology groups have also been lobbying in support of a series of bills introduced in the House that would authorize new funding support for allied health, including one measure specifically targeted to the lab workforce—H.R. 1175, the Medical Laboratory Personnel Shortage Act of 2005.
The groups have tried without success to move H.R. 1175 by getting it attached to broader House legislation, and no companion measure has been introduced in the Senate, Elissa Passiment, executive vice president of the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, told NIR.
But the issue is getting more attention from lawmakers, she said. More members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors, following a lobbying blitz earlier this year by ASCLS, the American Society for Clinical Pathology, and the Clinical Laboratory Management Association.
H.R. 1175 would authorize $11.2 million in new funding for scholarship and loan repayment programs for medical lab personnel, and for faculty development and public ad campaigns to promote medical lab careers.
Passiment said there is a lack of understanding on Capitol Hill of key lab workforce issues because "we don’t have strong data, most is anecdotal." We can only count heads in states where lab personnel licensure is required, she noted. That currently includes California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and West Virginia, plus the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Getting new authorizing funding is important, Passiment said, but getting the actual money is another thing. Several years back, she noted, Congress passed a bioterrorism bill that authorized $25 million for clinical laboratory science, but the money was never appropriated.
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November 6, 2006 - Table of Contents
