Act of 1965, they have expressed some concern on the rapidity of trying to move from the direct Federal loan to the insured loan in terms of the amount of credit that exists now but they have evidenced that they favor the principle that is behind this and are concerned only with the speed of its transition.

Mr. PICKLE. I assume that they have not cared to make the individual loans or general education loans in the past as a matter of inconvenience, among other things. I am not sure that they would want to get into these loans even on this basis unless they could loan a lump sum to a college or an institution to administer.

In effect what this does, as I understand it, is instead of the Federal Government providing funds, private capital is providing it with Government guarantee. But my question is, Is private capital willing to put up this money?

Mr. KELLY. Only experience will tell you the answer. there are several reasons why we believe this will occur.

But I think

One, we have talked to bankers who indicate that it is highly desirable from their standpoint if they are able to make a secured loan, and this in effect is a secured loan because of the insurance behind it, to establish a relationship with the professional people who are at an early stage in their career, during their educational period, to establish with them a relationship that will be continued during their professional career.

We think it is also of interest to both the banking institutions, to the students, and to the educational institutions to arrange for the collection process to occur through a financial institution rather than through educational institutions. So that we feel a sense of confidence that the funds will be available.

As a matter of fact, I think you could feel a much greater sense of confidence that they will be available with respect to the health profession student loans than with respect to others because it is so clear that the borrower will be a person who will have a continuing interest in this with financial institutions throughout his career.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a question?

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Yes, I do.

The CHAIRMAN. You go ahead. Then I will recognize Mr. Springer

next.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Let me get this clear, too, because I am somewhat confused now on how this applies. It is my understanding that the bill is not just going to teach teachers on how to do these things but it is going to take students and start them right in the first year of college.

Secretary GARDNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Don't you start a program here of trying to train dental technicians right in the first year of college?

Secretary GARDNER. Yes, sir. But this program is designed for those students who are going then on to 4 years.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. I understand that. You have restricted it to a 4-year college?

Secretary GARDNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. In the definition of what your school would be, that I understand. But the point I was trying to make—I knew the bill did not include it but why is it that some program cannot

be also coordinated with your other facilities, your junior college facilities which you do include in your nursing training program, do

you not?

Secretary GARDNER. I think I will ask the Surgeon General to answer this.

Dr. STEWART. Mr. Rogers, at the University of Florida now you have a school of allied health sciences which is training for the bachelor's degree. The intent here is severalfold.

One of the more important ones is that in training at this level you want to train within a medical setting. The students are trained along with the doctors and the dentists, and this is the group they are going to work with, and the nurses.

In the community college they do not have this setting to be involved in at all. They are trained at the technician level and then they go on to a practical experience thereafter. They are the practitioners in a sense. So they have two different levels of training in the technician level.

This particular bill is aimed at this baccalaureate or masters degree level because it seems to be the biggest gap in the total program of training. The Vocational Education Act is training about 40,000 to 50,000 people now at the technician level in the 1- to 2-year programs. Mr. ROGERS of Florida. In the 4-year colleges as well? Does not NDEA cover it in the 4-year college?

Dr. STEWART. The NDEA would cover anyone in the 4-year college on a loan program, yes.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Certainly. Then why is it necessary to duplicate this?

Dr. STEWART. The only student aid in this proposed bill is for traineeships for people who are going on to serve as teachers or administrators, or to serve in fields requiring specialized training. This is not providing a stipend to the individual for the first year of a baccalaureate degree. The bill is more importantly, I think, aimed at creating the training situation, helping build the buildings, providing the support of the teaching situation.

The attempt here is really to capitalize on a movement which has been occurring in the country: the development of allied health professions schools or allied health schools within the medical complex so that these students will be trained with the people they are going to work with. You get quality of training in the situation.

There are some 30,000 to 38,000 of these schools now. This effort needs to be accelerated a great deal, supported a great deal more, because we know that the 2-year training, 1-year training, is going to double probably in the next 5 to 10 years.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. If we support it.

Dr. STEWART. Through the Vocational Education Act.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Yes; but don't they have to be accredited in our nursing program, they have to be accredited to come in under the Nurses Training Act?

Dr. STEWART. The technicians requiring 1 to 2 years of training would come under the Vocational Education Act. This is the group that will have to be expanded and about doubled; but we need to add a ratio of supervisors, of highly specialized technicians, of teachers, to this increasing pool of people.

This is what this bill is attempting to do.

The nursing program you mention comes under the Nurses Training Act.

Dr. LEE. Most of the people who go into these special fields such as medical technology begin to specialize after their second year in college, the third and fourth years when they take special courses related to these fields rather than the first 2 years where they get their general education.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. I noticed, too, that you have a provision in the bill to increase the per diem here from $50 and $75 to $100 for the Council?

Secretary GARDNER. Yes; we have that.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Is there any reason why this is necessary? Mr. KELLY. Mr. Rogers, as you know many of the statutes which provide the compensation for members of panels and councils were established at the time that the Federal pay rates were considerably lower.

They were originally conceived as authorizing up to the highest levels in pay rates. We are now authorized to employ consultants at a figure I think of $98 a day which I think is the highest pay which can be made.

We have statutes that authorize this for newly authorized councils and not for the old ones. We are trying to make it uniform throughout all legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Younger.

Mr. YOUNGER. I just want to get my oar in on the junior colleges. Actually you are going to be tremendously short in your facilities for training. Many of the junior colleges are going on up now to the 4-year degree. You can't just say a junior college is the old classification.

We have one that used to be called a junior college which changed its name and they are working on up to the 4-year course. They have good facilities to furnish nurses training. I think we have to use all of the facilities, not part of them.

That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Springer.

Mr. SPRINGER. I have no questions.

Mr. CHAIRMAN. I would like to again state that we do have the Vocational Education Act which comes under another committee of this Congress. That act provides this vocational training and turns out the people who actually get into the working areas.

I want to thank all you gentlemen for coming and contributing to this program. You have done an excellent job. This concludes our hearings until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

Secretary GARDNER. Thank you, sir.

(Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 30, 1966.)

ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONS PERSONNEL

TRAINING ACT OF 1966

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 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 committee will come to order.

Yesterday when the committee adjourned we were having hearings on H.R. 13196, Allied Health Professions Personnel Training Act. Resuming this morning, we will have as our first witness Dr. Samuel Martin, provost of the University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla., representing the Association of American Medical Colleges. Dr. Martin, I see you have an associate with you. Will you identify him and then you may start in with your testimony. You may present your statement in its entirety in the record and summarize it or do as you wish.

STATEMENT OF DR. SAMUEL P. MARTIN, PROVOST, THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, GAINESVILLE, FLA., ON BEHALF OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES

Dr. MARTIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Samuel P. Martin. I am provost of the University of Florida, which is located in Gainesville, Fla. I appear today in behalf of the Association of American Medical Colleges, a voluntary, nongovernmental body, which includes in its membership all of the accredited schools of medicine in the United States.

I am grateful for this opportunity to present our views on H.R. 13196.

This bill, Mr. Chairman, involves two separate and quite distinct proposals. The first suggests measures designed to increase the number and quality of medical technologists and personnel in other allied health professions. With this proposal and the measures suggested herein, our association is in wholehearted agreement. It has our enthusiastic support.

The second proposal in the bill has to do with basic changes in the ongoing program of loans to students of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and other health professions. For these suggestions, our reaction cannot be called enthusiastic.

51

I am not going to read the testimony. I prepared this for you. I would just like to speak for a few minutes on this particular problem. You are acutely aware, I am certain, of the problem that we face in the area of health. In the last 50 years there has been a marked shift from the acute disease to the chronic diseases, diseases which are involved in taking considerable toll of our population.

In this room every one of us on a statistical average will have two chronic diseases. This has been shown by a study done by the Commission on Chronic Illness. Half of those diseases will be of a substantial nature and half of these that are of a substantial nature could be prevented with adequate care given at the proper time.

Therefore, I think you in Congress have recognized the gravity of this wave of chronic illness and you also recognize the need for intervention into chronic illness. So, you have supported patient care and in this legislation you are supporting training in preparation for a cadre of people to approach this problem.

In the training you have supported the physicians in the past. This bill, as I see it, supports the allied health professions. When one looks at the allied health professions one divides them into two large groups, one group that deals with theory and skill and applies theory and skill to the problem.

The other group is people who apply skill to a problem. One group could classify themselves as technologists. The other as technicians. This bill supports the training of the technologists and more importantly I feel this bill has provisions for training teachers in this field because if we are going to meet our need we must train teachers.

Section 781 to section 794 is well designed to cover support construction, it covers support, basic support of these institutions, and I think more importantly it has a place for special support whereby these health professions can come together, develop common core curriculums and even develop adequate training programs so that we can facilitate training larger numbers of these very skilled people who can help us in the care of patients.

Again, the advanced traineeship I think is particularly important because of our great need for teachers and the competition that education has with the work situation for the teachers.

On page 18 of the bill we deal with the forgiveness features of the bill. I think these are very good. The forgiveness feature has never worked very well with the medical student because of his high earning capacity once he leaves. We in medical education are acutely concerned as to how we can get the doctor to the outlying individual and see that this individual gets care.

It would be our feeling that if we could extend it to the health related personnel there would be a great encouragement to get health related personnel into these areas, and by putting health related personnel in the area we would in turn make it an attractive situation. for the physician.

A physician has learned to use these people and have them help him with care, and when he goes to an isolated area he very frequently does not have any of these people to help him, and therefore he turns to an easier situation where health personnel are available.

So that I think consideration should be given to the forgiveness feature to the health related personnel, because we believe in the long run this will help the people in the related areas.