CCLA Board Meeting

WEEKDAY, January18, 2018

9:30AM– 10:30AM

Meeting Minutes

1. CALL TO ORDER

  • Meeting called to order by Christine Sabol at 9:32AM PST

2. MEETING ATTENDEES

Attendee / Company
Christine Sabol / Quest Diagnostics
Ken Neal / LabCorp
Julie Ramage / Pfizer, Inc
Anna Choi / Cedars - Sinai
Bill Gardner / Physicians Diagnostics Ref. Lab
Laurie Howard / Lab Corp
Jeff Lanzolatta / PacTox
Danial Van Buren / Ascend Clinical
Jeff Glenn / West Pacific Medical
Carol Stoyla / Prometheus

3. APPROVAL OF MEETING MINUTES

November 2017Meeting Minutes

  • Motion to approve, motion carried. Minutes approved as submitted.

HOT TOPICS

  1. Legislative Update-Legislature returns January 3, 2018

AB658 – Lab License Fees passed and license fees are deferred for the labs for 2018 and 2019

AB659-Medi-Cal Reporting passed and now is done every three years instead of yearly

Jan 3rd, the legislature returns to Sacramentofor second year of two-year session which will end August 31st. All bills have to be out of their house of origin by Jan 31st. We will be able to see what will be up for legislative review after that time. Feb 16th is the bill intro deadline and that is when new bills will be viewed.

Two CA legislators stepped down for sexual harassment. One of our lab supporters also resigned Mr. Ridley-Thomas due to health concerns. That leaves three open seats in the legislature when last year the democrats had a 2/3 super majority in the Assembly and Senate, but with these three seats open, they have lost the super majority. The Governor has called a special election in June as part of primary elections. Other changes include a re-call effort on Senator Newman due to gas tax votes and the Pro-Tem in the Senate has changed and is now Ms. Toni Atkins, who was previously speaker of the Assembly. This year is an election year in CA including the Governor’s race as Jerry Brown is terming out. Gavin Newsome is running along with Antonio Villarigosa. In CA the top two vote getters go on the ballot versus democrat vs. republican. There are many propositions being brought forward this election cycle.

On January 10th, Governor Brown released his last budget of his term. There is a $6.1 billion surplus. The Governor proposes spending a lot of it on reserves. The LAO agrees with this strategy due to apossible economic downturn in the future and due to federal uncertainty in the current administration. His plan is to use the rest of the surplus to increase funding to schools.

Under discussion will be the money from Prop 55 which extended taxes to raise money for Medi-Cal. Gov. Brown proposes to kept that money for the current needs rather than increasing the funding for the clinicians as was originally intended. There is still an issue of how the funds should be increased and Gov Brown is not supporting this. He is promising to roll the money over to future year budgets for Medi-Cal increases. The director of financing says there isn’t a surplus, but actually a deficit so no additional monies will go into the Medi-Cal fund, so there is disagreement amongst parties.

  1. Review of LSR

The bill introduction deadline hasn’t come about yet, so only a few new bills to see yet. Just the same two year bills we have been watching which are currently inactive. They have until Jan 31st to get them back out of their house. Christine brought up AB 1788 which was recently introduced. She asked the group to put it in a watch position. The CA Hospital Association is carrying a bill to expand the role of what a MLT can do within the lab. We will have more information when the bill is introduced.

  1. Request for information from CMS

This was late add on to the agenda. The CCLA office received a request to comment on CMS CLIA updates and sanctions on other issues. Comments are due March 12th. It was decided to form a sub-commitee to represent CCLA to address and make comments. Committee includes Christine Sabol, Anna Choi, and Julie Ramage. Everyone was asked to send comments and suggestions directly to the CCLA office to be viewed by the committee.

  1. CCLA-LAB PAC

The Lab PAC fund has $18,000 in it right now. The CCLA offices were able to attend 10 fundraisers last year. With this being an election year, they anticipate an increase in request for fundraisers and activities. It was asked for all companies who could contribute to do so with the max amount being $7,300 per year.

  1. CCLA Committee Membership

The plan is to update our committeesand members list for 2018. Kristi asked the membership at large to please volunteer to be on the following committees;

  • Annual Conference Committee
  • Hotel committee for the annual meeting
  • Legislative committee
  • Nominating committee

The offices will send out a list of committees and ask the membership to please volunteer and grow the committee list.

4. BUSINESS REPORTS

  • Treasurer’s Report- Ken Neal
  • As of January 18, 2018, the balance is $110,697 with an outstanding check of $500 currently. The fund should be growing as membership dues arrive through this month.
  • Membership 2017 Update
  • The offices will be sending out reminders for membership renewal this month.
  • Industry Developments
  • Julie Ramage brought up the lack of comments from the CCLA on the NGS NCD which comments closed on January 17th. We had signed onto an extension letter with ACLA for these comments, but due to lack of any CCLA members coming forward to ask for participation from the group, no comments were made. Going forward, hopefully we can be more aligned with our national groups as well to support important initiatives that impact our membership.
  • Annual Conference – Hilton Costa Mesa- November 7-9, 2018

5. CLINICAL LABORATORY TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY COMMITTEE (CLTAC) - Bill Gardner

Meeting held December 1st. The Health department is still having IT troubles, and as of this has not been able to do the online licensing it promised. So many people are having issues accessing their licenses for renewal. There was also discussion of state validation surveys.

6. MEDICARE CONTRACTOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE – Jonathan Nakamoto/Ken Neal

No update

7. CCLA MEDICARE COMMITTEE – Lale White

To be held February 7th at Xifin

8. CCLA MEDI-CAL COMMITTEE – Lale White

Held December 13th. IT issues with billing was discussed. New rates were not programmed in so the recoupments have been in place. Phase one of the recoupments has started with Phase 2 in December and Phase 3 to be enacted.

9. NEW BUSINESS - none

ADJOURNMENT

  • Meeting was adjourned at 10:30 AMPST

Respectfully Submitted,

Julie Ramage

Next Meeting:

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Los Angeles – Embassy Suites North Hotel

9801 Airport Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90045

(310) 215-1000

Cost: $75.00

IMPORTANT: If you plan to attend this meeting, please reply to this e-mail or call Traci Hundley at the Administrative Office at (916) 446-2646 to make reservations. Meeting fee is $75 and includes lunch. Check can be made out to CCLA.

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