During a House Energy Committee hearing before the Congressional Recess, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) asked Associate Administrator for Rural Health Policy at the Health Resources and Services Administration Tom Morris about metrics to measure the success of rural healthcare programs.
00:02Gentle lady yields back, now recognize the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Guthrie, for his five minutes of questions.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank all of you being here today, and Dr. Corrigan-Curray.
00:11First, before I get started on my question, I see Brian Fahey sitting behind you, and I saw him walking around here, and I was thinking it was normal.
00:18Then he goes and sits behind you, so you realize you got one of the top healthcare staffers from Capitol Hill to join you.
00:24So I really appreciate Brian's service in my office and on our committee, and now in his role in the executive branch.
00:31So I appreciate you having great, great, he's a great, you'll enjoy working with him.
00:36He's two beautiful girls, too, so they're, saw him start a young family in my office.
00:42So first, I want to start with, I appreciate what FDA's done on the work to implement AMUFA over the last five years.
00:50My question, what, what do you think has been successful with AMUFA, and then what would you like to see different?
01:00Sorry.
01:00Under AMUFA-1, it was really, let's build this program, and starting from scratch and getting, you know, our electronic system, getting those foundational guidances, getting the staff who could do the work, and then, you know, we, by year, we started to get meetings with companies to start innovation.
01:18And we received our first new OMAR for a sunscreen.
01:22I think AMUFA-2 really reflects the learnings from AMUFA-1.
01:26So one is that we need to provide more opportunities for innovation.
01:30And we're going to do that by certain meetings need to go longer if it's a complex question.
01:35We're going to offer opportunities to look at protocol synopsis.
01:39We understand there's still questions about the GRAS standard, and so we're going to elicit what those questions are and do some more education.
01:46We're going to provide more clarity on when you're doing a proposed order for a new active ingredient, including some clarity on the confidentiality of the data that comes along with that and how we treat that.
01:57We also understand there's room to grow in the quality area of AMUFA.
02:02And so one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to try and we're going to staff up and get those assessments and new facilities.
02:09So a facility comes online and starts selling their drug, and we start asking them questions and understand their facility.
02:15And we're also going to release those what we call information requests.
02:19They're the questions we ask because that gives industry more insight into what we are expecting.
02:24And of course, any warning letters that might come out, we will.
02:29And we're going to update our risk model.
02:31So when we're deciding where to go for an inspection, it's specific to the kind of risk factors we might see in an OTC facility.
02:38Finally, a lot of transparency we have.
02:41So we got our indexing up of our older documents.
02:45We want to further give those documents.
02:48We're going to have transparency not only around those who don't pay their fees, but those who do pay their fees.
02:54We're going to give transparency around exclusivity.
02:57And, you know, we're generally going to continue to work with those companies on innovative.
03:02We have some proposed orders, as I said, the one about changing the dosage forms.
03:05So we're really hoping to move forward on that.
03:08So those are some of the examples.
03:11Thank you for your answer.
03:12Mr. Morris, I mentioned my opening statement about rural health.
03:15Can you elaborate on the metrics HRSA uses to measure improved health outcomes through the rural health care services and outreach program?
03:22I'm sorry, sir.
03:23Can you repeat the question?
03:24Can you elaborate on the metrics HRSA uses on the health care program to measure improved health outcomes on rural health care services?
03:32And sort of how we measure the impact of our program?
03:34How do you measure the impact of that program?
03:35Yes, sir.
03:36We look at, for the rural health care outreach program, we look at three main areas.
03:41We track, do they improve health outcomes?
03:46That's one area.
03:47We also look at whether they're able to continue the grant after they continue the project after federal funding.
03:54Because these grants are essentially startup funding.
03:56They're not ongoing grants in perpetuity.
03:58So the idea is we're funding an idea in a community and the hope is that they can keep it sustainable.
04:03And we find that about just over 90% of the grantees continue the project after federal funding.
04:08And we do find that like in our most recent cohort, more than 90% of the grantees were able to show improved health status for the people they served.
04:16The third area we look at is economic impact because these dollars have a secondary role in these communities.
04:21So for every dollar invested in our most recent cohort, it generated another $2 in economic activity.
04:27Okay, thank you.
04:28And Dr. Chen, we're estimated to be over 170,000 physicians short in the next decade.
04:34Title VII and Title VIII were created to help increase participation in healthcare workforce.
04:39How can these programs be improved?
04:41Have about 30 seconds or streamlined to better meet the need?
04:44Title VII and VIII to help retract more physicians.
04:47I think the most important thing is that they are reauthorized.
04:50These programs have been very impactful.
04:53We find that our health professional training programs rely on them to support training that is, again, focused on areas of need,
05:00whether it's specialties and professions that are in need, as well as integrating content into curriculum and training,
05:08for example, behavioral health into primary care, as well as training for rural and underserved communities.
05:14So we do find that these programs are very effective.
05:17Okay, thank you.
05:18My time is expiring.
05:19I'll yield back.
05:20I'll talk a little bit again.
05:23Thank you, everyone.
05:27Good afternoon.
05:31Thank you, guys.
05:32J Sous day.
05:33langue andıyorumi.
05:37Thank you, thank you.
05:38Thank you, Rob.
05:42Thank you, Congressman.
05:45Benjamin, and you know that our last time has mal Rajam from already ready having some
Be the first to comment