Proficiency Testing Improvement Act of 2005
PROFICIENCY TESTING IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - December 17, 2005)
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GENERAL LEAVE
Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Mr. 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 the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Georgia?
There was no objection.
Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Each year, the licensed physicians and cytotechnologists who screen and interpret Pap tests save the lives of thousands of women by detecting the earliest signs of cervical cancer, a common cancer in women. Without question, these professionals serve a vital role in the health care delivery system of this Nation, and we owe them our sincere admiration and appreciation for the services they perform.
However, our Federal bureaucracy has let these professionals and their patients down by neglecting to develop an effective and appropriate proficiency test for these individuals as required by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1998, commonly referred to as CLIA. Instead, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have recently chosen to implement an outdated and flawed testing system that was finalized over 13 years ago.
This situation is unacceptable, and these professionals who are performing vital services deserve better.
And that is why I have introduced this legislation. H.R. 4568 will place a hold on the current CMS testing system and require that a new rule be developed that accomplishes the following four goals: First, to reflect the collaborative clinical decision-making of laboratory personnel involved in screening or interpreting cytological preparations; second, to revise grading or scoring criteria to reflect current practice guidelines; and, third, to provide for such testing to be conducted no more often than every 2 years; and, fourth, to make such revisions to the standards for such testing as may be necessary to reflect changes in the laboratory operations and practices since the standards were promulgated originally in 1992.
This is the least we can do for these professionals. And I want to thank my colleagues SUE MYRICK, TOM PRICE, JOHN SHIMKUS and SHERROD BROWN for joining me in sponsoring this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
While my colleague, Mr. Brown of Ohio, is my copartner in the issue of health care and he and I share many things in common, this bill being one of them, and I would disagree with his comments with regard to Medicare part D, I for one am pleased that we are finally offering senior citizens of this country the opportunity to have a prescription drug benefit plan.
We can disagree on that, and we will probably have some disagreements in the future; but I do want to thank Mr. Brown of Ohio and his staff and the others on the minority side for their cooperation in dealing with this issue that is before us today on pathology licensure.
I think that it is a bill that we need to act on quickly, and hopefully our colleagues across the way will do likewise.
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