Cong. John E. Fogarty House Floor Support of H. R. 13196 June 21, 1966 Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in favor of H.R. 13196, a bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to increase the opportunities for training of medical technologists and personnel in other allied health professions. The bill also seeks to improve the educational quality of the schools training such allied health professions personnel. A third major purpose is to strengthen and improve the existing loan programs for students of medicine, osteopathy, dentistry, pharmacy, podiatry, optometry, and nursing. While Congress in the past has developed a fine record of “providing for the training of physicians, nurses, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, and pharmacists, there is an ever- increasing need to support the training of the wide array of technologists and other health professionals. These allied health professions perform the technical support work so essential to the practice of modern medicine. The allied health professions include such occupations as clinical psychologists, dental hygienists, dieticians, hospital administrators, medical illustrators, medical record librarians, medical technologists, nutritionists, physical therapists, virologists, and X-ray technologists. -2- In addition to the working professionals there is a need for supervisors of sub-professional workers such as technicians and laboratory aides and for teachers in the allied health professions. H.R. 13196 seeks to provide for these needs through (1) grants for the construction of teaching facilities, (2) grants for schools for educational improvement, (3) traineeships to help prepare teachers, administrators, supervisors, and other personnel in specialized practice, and (4) project grants to develop, demonstrate, or evaluate curriculums for training new types of health technologists. The construction grants are patterned after those now available for medical, dental, and certain other health professions schools under the Health Professional [Educational Assistance Act, and to nursing schools under the Nurse Training Act. The improvement grant provisions closely resemble the educational improvement grants authorized by the Health Professions Educational Assistance Amendments of 1965. Funds for these grants will be used to upgrade the quality of education, including the coordination of allied health curriculums within an institution. This coordination enables individuals who will later work together in : providing health care to be trained together in situations which approximate actual experience. The traineeships would help prepara teachers, administrators, supervisors, and specialists in the various allied health ie now working in the allied health professions to return to SG io o 'G Ret e school for limited periods to obtain the further training which is necessary to fit them for teaching or supervisory duties. The project grants proposed in H.R. 13196 are to be used oor developing, demonstrating, or evaluating new courses ci stucy to train new kinds of health technologists. As technology cevelons, cyses of people will be needed to apply the new oroject grants would allow educators flexibility and room tox experimentation to anticipate these new requirements. in 1963 there were some 5,000 graduates at the baccalaureane and about 2,909 more at the advanced degree levels in the various allied hb ssions. Under the three-year program vroposec in H.R. LS196. am additional three to four thousand be trained, As the physician encounters increasing demands on his time, more and more tasks need to be delegated to trainec specialists. 23 neither practical nor possible to train Furthermore, physicians to be ski ilful in all of the various speci ial sechnicgues and methods requixed in the health field today. ~4- The expenditure on health and medical services in this country totaled $40 billion last year, Rising incomes, better education, urbanization, population growth, the changing age structure of the pooulation and new mechanisms of payment for health services have worked to enlarge the demand for such services, Physicians, dentists. and nurses form the core of the health manvower teem,but we are becoming increasingly denendent on services from an expanding number and variety of other health workers. As Secretary John W. Gardner said in his testimony on H.R. 13196: "There is a need for allied health ! professionals to extend the reach of services both in terms of quantity and quality that can be provided by physicians and dentists. There is a need for a vital army of health workers...who will require training and supervision to provide needed services." Acute shortages of such personnel have been reported in virtually every area of the country. Estimates made by the ‘Public Health Service and professional groups show that to meet our needs in some of these allied health fields, American schools will need to graduate: twice the present number of medical and X-ray technologists; three or four times the number of dental hygienists; and eight or ten times the number of medical record librarians, physical therapists and occupational therapists. «5e An excellent appraisal of why we face this grave situation was given in a recent report by the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress which stated: "We have...not developed the proper manpower training programs for the new technologies. We have continued to hold on to our traditional and basic training programs in the various health and medical fields without analyzing the new technologies available and the real possibility of training new categories of manpower who can perform many of the functions now carried out by highly skilled and scarce professional personnel." It is time that we in Congress acknowledge not only this "real possibility", but this necessity. It is time that we reaffirm our commitment to improving the Nation's health through a comprehensive assistance program which must include the training of these vital allied health professionals. I urge each of you to lend your full support to this measure. The great needs for the coming decade can only be met fully if we act and act now.