FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Contact: (202) 225-3943
February 19, 1998
No. HL-18
Congressman Bill Thomas (R-CA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on health care quality. The hearing will take place on Thursday, February 26, 1998, in the main Committee hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only. However, any individual or organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the Committee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
There is intensifying interest at both the State and Federal level in legislative initiatives intended to promote health care quality and provide protections for consumers enrolled in health plans. Dozens of bills have been introduced during the 105th Congress and hundreds have been considered in State legislatures across the country that are designed to give both providers and patients more clout in dealing with private-sector managed care plans.
Private-sector purchasers have devised their own strategies for holding health plans accountable for delivering quality care in addition to lowering health care costs. There also is a wealth of accreditation and other voluntary private-sector initiatives aimed at measuring and improving health care quality. For example, in recent years, both the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Committee for Quality Assurance have made considerable progress toward implementing performance and outcome measures. In addition, the American Medical Association recently developed a standardized process for certifying the quality of physician services.
At the same time, the Federal government has focused increasingly on exercising its purchasing power to promote health care quality in government programs. Medicare reforms included in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA) (P.L. 105-33) broadened significantly the patient protections already in place in Medicare law, including a requirement that health plans cover emergency services that a "prudent layperson" would deem necessary, a provision prohibiting health plans from interfering with physician communication about treatment options, and a requirement that plans consider appeals from denials of care in emergency and urgent care situations within specified time frames. The BBA also strengthened the authority of the Health Care Financing Administration to collect, monitor, measure, and disseminate information about the quality of care provided to beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare+Choice plans.
Aside from last year's Medicare reforms, relatively little legislative attention has been paid to measuring and ensuring quality of care across a wide range of delivery systems and practice settings, and very few of the recent initiatives are based on clinical evidence of health outcomes. Moreover, there is an inherent tension between government requirements and ensuring access to affordable private health coverage in a voluntary market. It has been estimated by the Congressional Budget Office and private economists that premium increases of one percent resulting from government mandates cause between 200,000 and 400,000 Americans to lose their health coverage.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Thomas stated: "We need to get a realistic assessment of the state of our nation's health care quality. Before rushing to enact legislation that may do more harm than good, we should set aside politics and sloganeering and figure out how we can help empower consumers to make better health care choices based on clinical data and outcomes measures. Any effort to provide increased protections must be balanced carefully against the risk of increasing the number of uninsured Americans and making health coverage more costly and more unattainable."
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing is designed to take a broad look at issues of quality and accountability in the nation's health care system, to help identify current measures of quality and to examine the role of the private sector, the government, and developing information technologies in promoting health care quality.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Any person or organization wishing to submit a written statement for the printed record of the hearing should submit at least six (6) single-space legal-size copies of their statement, along with an IBM compatible 3.5-inch diskette in ASCII DOS Text or WordPerfect 5.1 format only, with their name, address, and hearing date noted on a label, by the close of business, Thursday, March 12, 1998, to A.L. Singleton, Chief of Staff, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, 1102 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. If those filing written statements wish to have their statements distributed to the press and interested public at the hearing, they may deliver 200 additional copies for this purpose to the Subcommittee on Health office, room 1136 Longworth House Office Building, at least one hour before the hearing begins.
FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS:
Each statement presented for printing to the Committee by a witness, any written statement or exhibit submitted for the printed record or any written comments in response to a request for written comments must conform to the guidelines listed below. Any statement or exhibit not in compliance with these guidelines will not be printed, but will be maintained in the Committee files for review and use by the Committee.
1. All statements and any accompanying exhibits for printing must be typed in single space on legal-size paper and may not exceed a total of 10 pages including attachments. At the same time written statements are submitted to the Committee, witnesses are now requested to submit their statements on an IBM compatible 3.5-inch diskette in ASCII DOS Text or WordPerfect 5.1 format. Witnesses are advised that the Committee will rely on electronic submissions for printing the official hearing record.
2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not be accepted for printing. Instead, exhibit material should be referenced and quoted or paraphrased. All exhibit material not meeting these specifications will be maintained in the Committee files for review and use by the Committee.
3. A witness appearing at a public hearing, or submitting a statement for the record of a public hearing, or submitting written comments in response to a published request for comments by the Committee, must include on his statement or submission a list of all clients, persons, or organizations on whose behalf the witness appears.
4. A supplemental sheet must accompany each statement listing the name, full address, a telephone number where the witness or the designated representative may be reached and a topical outline or summary of the comments and recommendations in the full statement. This supplemental sheet will not be included in the printed record.
The above restrictions and limitations apply only to material being submitted for printing. Statements and exhibits or supplementary material submitted solely for distribution to the Members, the press and the public during the course of a public hearing may be submitted in other forms.
The
Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons with
disabilities. If you are in need of special accommodations, please
call 202-225-1721 or 202-226-3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event
(four business days notice is requested). Questions with regard to
special accommodation needs in general (including availability of
Committee materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the
Committee as noted above.