Patient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act of 2004

PATIENT NAVIGATOR OUTREACH AND CHRONIC DISEASE PREVENTION ACT OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - October 05, 2004)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 918) to authorize the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Cancer Institute, and the Indian Health Service to make grants for model programs to provide to individuals of health disparity populations prevention, early detection, treatment, and appropriate follow-up care services for cancer and chronic diseases, and to make grants regarding patient navigators to assist individuals of health disparity populations in receiving such services, as amended.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

GENERAL LEAVE

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 918, the bill now under consideration.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Texas?

There was no objection.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we have a number of bills before the House today, dealing with health-related issues that have come out of the committee that I have the privilege to chair, the Committee on Energy and Commerce. This bill is one of the more important of those bills as it attempts to give our citizens the ability to navigate the health care system to get the very best possible care in the most time-efficient manner.

I would like to take a step back and reflect on where we have been in this Congress and in previous Congresses. As the second session of this Congress draws to a close, I think it is entirely fitting that the House should devote much of its time today on these health care issues. It is not a stretch, in my opinion, to call this House, the 108th Congress, the Health Care Congress. I am proud of the many accomplishments that the Committee on Energy and Commerce has been responsible for in this area over the last 2 years.

I think the achievement that we will reflect back on and be most proud of, of course, is the Medicare Modernization Act, which President Bush has already signed into law and which is helping millions of our senior citizens as we speak. After years of debate and inaction, this Congress finally has delivered in that bill a prescription drug benefit to our Nation's seniors.

Of course, not all of the Medicare Modernization Act's provisions are fully up and running yet. They will be phased in over the next several years. And when they are totally phased in, I think we will all look back and reflect that this was a very good thing that we have done in this Congress.

We should be proud of our achievement. I salute the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce who have worked so long and hard to make that happen.

Prescription drugs are not the only area where this Congress has worked to advance the health agenda of the American people. Working with President Bush, we have also written laws that upgrade our medical device program. We have instituted a new animal drug approval system. We have provided for competition in the contact lens marketplace. We have updated our poison control center programs.

I might add that all of those achievements occurred under Congressman BILLY TAUZIN of Louisiana, who, as we speak, is undergoing radiation treatment down in Texas for a cancer that he has discovered in his body that, hopefully, is being removed.

We have also improved our Nation's organ donor system and, most recently, created a new program to help prevent and educate against youth suicide. By any measure, these accomplishments would rival that of any Congress in the past.

Today, we are continuing the good work we have already established in the 108th Congress. We have five substantive bills that we are going to debate and vote on, hopefully in a positive way, in the next several hours, all of which in some way improve the health care system for millions and millions of Americans.

The one we are debating at this moment is the Patient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act. The Committee on Energy and Commerce favorably reported this legislation last week, and it is now on the floor.

Improving health care outcomes for all Americans requires substantial improvements in health disparity populations, populations not defined solely by race and ethnicity, that have a significant disparity in the overall rate of disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality, or survival rates as compared to the health status of the general population. Patient navigator programs as provided in this bill provide outreach to communities to encourage more individuals to seek preventive care and coordinate that care so that they are less at risk to have or to maintain a chronic disease.

For example, the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention, a partnership between Memorial Sloan-Kettering and North General Hospital in Harlem, New York, operates a patient navigator program to help patients and family members deal with the complexities of the health care system in that area. By coordinating health care services through a patient navigator, programs strive to shorten the period of time when the patient is screened for cancer or other chronic diseases and further diagnosis and treatment, so they can be treated as soon as possible.

H.R. 918, as amended by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, authorizes a 5-year demonstration program to evaluate the use of patient navigators. Specifically, the legislation requires patient navigators to coordinate health care services and provider referrals, facilitating the involvement of community organizations to provide assistance to patients, facilitate enrollment in clinical trials, anticipate barriers within the health care system itself, to help ensure prompt diagnostic care and treatment, to coordinate with the health insurance ombudsman program, and conduct ongoing outreach to health disparity populations for preventive care.

Grant recipients must establish base-line measures and benchmarks to evaluate the program outcome, which all culminate in a final report prepared by the Secretary no later than 6 months after the completion of the demonstration grant program. The bill authorizes a total of $25 million over a 5-year period to conduct these demonstration programs.

I would like to thank the distinguished gentlewoman from the 15th Congressional District of Ohio (Ms. Pryce), for her outstanding leadership and undying commitment to this particular bill. I would also like to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), for his work; the ranking member, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell); the subcommittee's ranking member, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown); and the bill's sponsor, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Menendez), for their assistance in streamlining this legislation.

Again, Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleagues on a very successful Health Care Congress, and especially on this particular bill. If we can get the bills that we are considering today to the President's desk, the 108th Congress should go down as one of the best ever for health care initiatives.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the 15th District of Ohio (Ms. Pryce), our distinguished Republican Conference chairwoman.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT