Miss HOVDE. It is of interest, if I may include this little bit of information, as I stated the four people who completed their masters of science degrees in medical technology have gone to institutions of higher learning to four other States to fill a need there.

Mr. NELSEN. I was interested in your testimony on page 4. What do you mean by the term immunohematologist?

Miss HOVDE. Immunohematologist is a person trained specifically in immunological procedures-well, the closest I come to it would be in allergies, the whole field of human sensitivities that we are hearing so much about now and in the whole field of blood transfussions. All of this comes into work of an immunohematologist.

Mr. NELSEN. I think we all agree that a great stimulation could result from some additional Federal funds as would be provided in this proposal. However, we always seem to find ourselves with more requests that we have dollars. Sometimes after a program has become established, funds are cut off. For example, in the land-grant colleges areas, the school milk program, and so forth.

At the present time there is some possibility that these may be cut back. It may be restored. However, with programs of this kind we always have to anticipate that the faucet will be turned off, and you may be left with the program on your own.

Be that as it may, we are happy to have your testimony. Certainly there appears to be a great need in these fields.

Thank you so much for coming in from the great State of Minnesota to address the chairman who is from the lesser State of Texas-we will change the record later, Walter.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. I was wondering if the gentleman would care to identify the Golden Gophers.

Mr. NELSEN. Yes; our great football team at the University of Minnesota is known as the Golden Gophers.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Mr. Kornegay.

Mr. KORNEGAY. I have no questions.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Mr. Adams.

Mr. ADAMS. Miss Hovde, I have very much enjoyed your statement. Again you have defined for us these various levels of medical technicians. I should ask again the same question that I did of the prior witness.

Do we by emphasizing in our programs too heavily the terms of the educational requirements place on our students a burden that they cannot follow through financially and, therefore, would we not be better off, for example, in the community college system, to go to the European gymnasium system of developing technicians?

Miss HOVDE. I am very much opposed to this type of education for the graduate professional medical technologist.

Mr. ADAMS. Where do we break them? Apparently you have this broken down into training educators and training them to train those who actually work in the field?

Miss HOVDE. There are two classes of laboratory personnel, those who are called laboratory assistants who usually have 1 year of training or 2 years of training in programs being developed within the junior colleges. The other class of medical technologists is the 4-year professional medical technologist.

Anything beyond that is just as any other profession, a step beyond. It is true that many of our baccalaureates, many of them do conduct the actual teaching in the hospital. That is true.

Mr. ADAMS. In other words, they would be aided by this in producing people who would go back into either the junior colleges or the other areas and instruct the laboratory assistants as opposed to technologists?

Miss HOVDE. That is right. I think the time has passed for us to wait for our educators and administrators to rise through the ranks by reason of experience alone to do this.

Things are moving too rapidly. We have to provide some provisions to give these people some assistance in providing instructors for laboratory personnel. In my own opinion I think it is very unwise to talk about increasing the auxiliary personnel without providing instructors for these personnel.

Mr. ADAMS. This is one of the problems we have, our production of the various strata. We find this not only in the medical field but all over, a series of strata have come down historically from the past to prevent the production at the lower level of a number of people who may not be qualified financially, motivewise, and a lot of other ways, to do the more complicated jobs.

We are using highly trained personnel to do these jobs. We want to avoid using skilled personnel for lower level jobs. This is what we are searching for.

Miss HOVDE. That is right. We do need the laboratory assistant. We need them very badly because there are many areas within laboratory work that are repetitive, that require a certain degree of skill that we can train to do this type of thing; thus, we relieve the technologist for the more demanding skills in chemistry and in other areas. Mr. ADAMS. You feel this bill will produce the people who can do this instruction?

Miss HOVDE. Yes; I do.

Mr. ADAMS. Thank you. I have no further questions.

Mr. ROGERS of Texas. Thank you, Miss Hovde, for you statement and your kindness in answering the questions.

That concludes the testimony this morning. The committee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock in the morning.

(Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Thursday, March 31, 1966.)

ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONS PERSONNEL

TRAINING ACT OF 1966

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 1966

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Harley O. Staggers (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order.

Yesterday when we adjourned we were having hearings on H.R. 13196, the Allied Health Professions Personnel Training Act of 1966. We resume hearings today. I am going to call on our colleague from Atlanta, Ga., Jim Mackay, to introduce our first witness, who is a constituent of his from the State of Georgia.

Mr. MACKAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Godwin happens to be more than a constituent. That is why I wanted to make a few remarks about him. A little more than a year ago when I was just taking my position as a freshman Congressman, Dr. Godwin was taking up his responsibility as president of the Fulton County Medical Society, which is the largest society of physicians in Georgia.

We were

We are neighbors, friends, fellow church members. talking about the fact that there had sometime ago been a misunderstanding between the medical profession and the Congress.

I challenged him to work closely with me in an effort to assess all of the matters affecting the medical profession. As a result he graciously accepted that challenge. I don't know whether he is glad he did or not because he has received everything that has come before this committee touching on health with the result that he almost has had to quit practicing medicine to read the literature that has come across his desk from my office.

In the course of this year he has developed a very close acquaintance with Dr. Phillip Lee and others in Health, Education, and Welfare and has worked closely with me. I consider him almost as an auxiliary member of this committee because of the kind of commitment, thought and energy that he has given to this assignment.

The Surgeon General told me when he was here the other day that he was very grateful for the contribution that Dr. Godwin had made because he recognized his department did not have all the answers and they needed the counsel of the highly qualified physician who was out in the field.

As I mentioned Monday, Dr. Godwin is not in a university center type situation but is in one of the finest community hospital situations in our State.

He does bring a point of view that comes from an area in which most of medicine is practiced, on the people of America. So I am very proud of the contribution he has made. It is a great privilege to present him here. He actually is here in his capacity as representative of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists and is a member of the ASCP Board Register of American Technologists which annually examines more than 3,500 graduates of professionally approved schools and certifies upward of more than 3,000 medical technologists in the country annually.

I don't know anyone who can come before the committee better qualified to speak on this legislation than Dr. Godwin. I appreciate this opportunity to make these remarks about him.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Godwin, you may proceed.

You may insert your statement in the record and summarize it if you care to or if you would prefer to read it you may do so.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN T. GODWIN ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL PATHOLOGISTS

Dr. GODWIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank Mr. Mackay for his very kind and generous remarks.

I wish to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear before the committee regarding H.R. 13196.

I have followed the activities of this important committee for many months and in particular during the 1st session of the 89th Congress. You will recall the passage of many health bills. Many of these are importantly related to the bill under discussion. Certainly it will not be possible to implement bills presently in effect unless the trained personnel are available to perform the functions required.

This is apparent in the personnel required in the Harris bills (H.R. 6881) relating to mental retardation, (H.R. 2985) staffing of mental health facilities, (H.R. 2986) community health, and others including the Appalachia program, PKU testing, medicare, heart disease, cancer, and stroke, and others.

New bills now under consideration such as H.R. 12453, the International Health Act; H.R. 12976, the Adult Health Protection Act; H.R. 13197, Comprehensive and Public Health Services Act of 1966; H.R. 13198, Hospital and Medical Facilities Modernization Amendments of 1966, will require large numbers of allied health personnel.

H.R. 13196 finally represents recognition of the need for adequate numbers of well trained paramedical personnel. It represents the culmination of effort on the part of many who have tried to bring attention to this need for many years.

In 1960 a proposal was submitted to the Public Health Service to perform most of the functions called for in this bill. The answer at that time (1960), and I quote from a letter from the Secretary's Office, stated:

The research training programs of the National Institutes of Health have not been designed to fill a training function of the kind you envision. Certainly medical technologists are vital to a satisfactory program of medical service, and they are of importance in medical research.

Nevertheless, the research training programs have been designed to train investigators themselves rather than the supporting personnel.