AACC Advocacy: Reflecting on 2022 and Looking Ahead

As we reach the midpoint of 2023, AACC is building on its determined advocacy of 2022 while setting its sights on future goals. Last year, the association was focused on preventing the passage of the Verifying Accurate Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act. This legislation would prove to be a significant disruption to the existing and effective regulations established through the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) under the oversight of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). If enacted, VALID would create onerous and duplicative requirements under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that burden healthcare providers and prevent laboratories from developing and performing tests critical to ensuring quality patient care and medical practice. Through its persistent advocacy efforts, AACC and allies successfully staved off VALID, protecting the ability of laboratories to perform these critical cutting-edge tests.

In 2023, AACC is advancing several issues critical to the laboratory community. The association recently endorsed the Saving Access to Laboratory Services Act (SALSA), which reduces the scope of the payment cuts under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA). SALSA would reform PAMA’s rate-setting methodology to ensure that payment data from hospitals and physician-office laboratories is used to determine the fees. This change would replace the current self-reporting method, which relies upon data from large laboratories that often get paid less because of their economies of scale.

This new methodology will not only be more representative of the broader laboratory market–as PAMA originally intended–but it will also be less administratively burdensome for laboratories. The association and its allies scored a significant legislative win last fall when Congress postponed PAMA-related laboratory-reimbursement cuts as well as the mandated payment-data reporting period until January 2024. The association’s advocacy on this issue continues; AACC continues to engage key lawmakers and their staffs and is working alongside the laboratory community, which is united in addressing the current shortcomings of PAMA. Although the association and its allies have been successful in urging Congress to prevent PAMA’s reimbursement cuts from taking effect for the last several fiscal years, a permanent fix is needed to preserve patient access to quality testing–especially in rural areas.

AACC has also diligently maintained its efforts to build Congressional support for its long-term advocacy priorities. The association has led a broad coalition advocating for better pediatric reference intervals (PRIs), urging more CDC funding to ensure more-accurate diagnostic results and more-informed treatments for children.

In addition, AACC has been at the forefront of a coalition of healthcare organizations that believes greater Congressional investment in harmonization will lead to improved health outcomes and future cost savings. Harmonization efforts have thus far yielded $2 million annually since FY 2018, improving the detection and management of various disorders and diseases. AACC continues to engage with key congressional offices, aiming to increase this to $9.2 million for FY 2024.

Supporting efforts to bolster the nation’s public-health infrastructure remains paramount for AACC. The association has joined allied stakeholders in urging Congress to support the CDC's Advanced Molecular Detection Program and has been pressing for more public-health workforce program funding. These efforts strive to ensure additional funding to mitigate workforce shortages through loan forgiveness and training programs, and to boost the capacity and scope of CDC programs that use cutting-edge science to prevent future potential pandemics and disease outbreaks, as well as to provide tools and capacity to healthcare systems for enhancing infectious-disease tracking and response capabilities.

AACC’s commitment to its members and the wider laboratory and healthcare community remains unwavering. The association anticipates a year filled with robust advocacy, progress, and growth, working towards a better-equipped, patient-responsive healthcare system.