Thursday, Feb. 25, the bill to license laboratory professionals had its hearing with the MN House Licensure Division.  

Testifying for the Licensure Coalition were Rick Panning, Kathy Hansen, Deb Rodahl and Dr. John McClure, pathologist from Methodist Hospital. 

The only official opponent scheduled was a person from a reproductive lab in Woodbury representing AAB (American Association of Bioanalysts). They don't support the need for a Bachelor degree level MLS and said we were not flexible in this regard. The AAB testimony contained blatant untruths about the bill and misleading and incorrect data. During their testimony, they shared that Fairview Health Services and HealthEast were also opposed to this bill

Going into the hearing, we were quite sure we did not have enough votes to advance the bill to the full House Health Committee. We still wanted to have the opportunity to present our testimony and get a better sense of why committee members opposed licensure for laboratory professionals. Because we were going to lose the vote 4-3,our author, Rep. Erin Murphy, "laid the bill on the table" and did not have a vote in the committee.

We are done for this session and will need to regroup for 2011 when we plan to reintroduce this bill.

Thank you for your support!

Rick Panning and Kathy Hansen, co-chairs Licensure Coalition