Alaskan wins "Ruth French Scholarship"
Turn-Around-Times, June 2003

Dan Southern, Senior Board Member for Alpha Mu Tau Fraternity sent  Heidi Mannion, Director of the MLT program at UAA,  the following e-mail notice :

“It is my pleasure to inform you that your student, Marcia Souser, is the recipient of the Ruth French Scholarship for $1500 awarded by Alpha Mu Tau Fraternity (AMTF). Her name will be called at the awards ceremony on Wednesday morning, July 23. If she can not be present, someone from your program can accept for her. I am sure you are very proud of your student's national scholarship. She is one of 15 selected this year.

AMTF will give out $24,000 to the 15 students this year at the annual meetings in Philadelphia. The purpose of AMTF is to provide scholarships for clinical laboratory science students at the undergraduate and graduate level. Thank you for helping your student be a winner.” 

As neither of our current student representatives will be able to attend the National Conference in July,  we have asked Marcia go as our student representative.  This way we get our Region IX student rep AND she can receive her scholarship in person.

Legislative Update 2003 

by Catherine M. Price, BLM, CLS

Catherine represented CLSA in Washington at the Legislative Symposium in March.

There are two House bills that we were asked to focus our attention on when we went to visit our Representative and Senators.  H.R. 623 Medical Laboratory Personnel Shortage Act 2003 and H.R. 833 Medicare Laboratory Services Access Act of 2003.  Both of these bills had been introduced in the House of Representatives but there was no corresponding bill in the Senate.  Our job as lobbyists was to discuss with our Representative and ask that they co-sponsor the bill and ask our Senators to either introduce a similar bill or co-sponsor a senate version.   

H.R. 623 would provide more opportunity for scholarships for students going into the laboratory field, and have a loan repayment program that would forgive payment by working for a designated time in areas of the country that had shortages of personnel.  It would also allow  schools of allied health to receive financial aid for training.  For fiscal year 2004 $100 M was proposed for this bill.  As of March 17^th the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Health.  Representative Young did co-sponsor this bill.  I requested both Senators to either bring the bill to the Senate or to co-sponsor a bill once introduced.  There was no commitment from either Senator.

H.R. 883 would adjust the fee for collecting specimens for clinical diagnostic laboratory tests under the Medicare Program.  The current fee is $3.00.  It has been three dollars for the last nineteen years.  This bill is asking for CPI adjustment which would increase the draw fee to $5.42.  This bill was referred to the Committees of Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means  on 2/25/03.  Then it was referred to the Subcommittee on Health on 3/10/03.  There is no Senate bill to date.  It is still being considered in both committees.  Neither Senator would commit to introducing or co-sponsoring a similar bill in the Senate. 

I recommend that you keep a close watch on what Congress is proposing for adjustments in the Medicare Program.  Currently there is consideration of  a co-pay for laboratory testing.  This would put an increased burden on the laboratory to collect these small fees and also put more financial burden on the Medicare population.  Congress is looking for money to “pay” for the  prescription drugs proposal.  Keep watch on this issue and call or write our Congressional representatives to let them know we don’t want the laboratory to be a victim  again to help pay for a revision of the Medicare program.