PUBLIC
POLICY // GOVERNORS' VANTAGE PINT
INVITATION ACCEPTED
From Capitol Hill to Oklahoma City, Senator Inhofe's Staff Visits Saint Anthony Hospital By Tauseef Ali, MD, FACG, ACG Governor for Oklahoma, Saint Anthony Hospital and the University of Oklahoma
BACK IN APRIL, I joined more than 50 ACG Governors and members of the ACG leadership to advocate on Capitol Hill on your behalf at the 2018 ACG Board of Governors Legislative Fly-In. During the Fly-In, I had the opportunity to meet with Senator Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) staff, and invited them to come have a personal tour of our endoscopy lab back home in Oklahoma. I recognized the mutual importance in this opportunity for both ACG members and his staff: they could learn more about colonoscopy from our perspective, and meet with the endoscopy nurses and team in order to gain first-hand knowledge and to better understand and advocate for GI-related issues in Washington, DC. In June, Senator Inhofe’s staff graciously toured our facility. During our meeting together at lunch, we sat down and discussed the issues I and other ACG leaders highlighted in April: colon cancer screening awareness, establishing exemptions for insurer step therapy, and the negative impact of prior authorization regulations. We discussed the “Removing Barriers to Colorectal Cancer Screening Act (S. 479/H.R. 1017),” which fixes a Medicare coverage quirk by waiving Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing when screening colonoscopies turn therapeutic. I also addressed the “Restoring the Patient’s Voice Act of 2017 (H.R. 2077),” Public Policy | 13
