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Text Box: Point 1: It is important that you contact your representative and senator during summer or fall (by Oct 1). We want members who have currently signed on to our bill as a co-author to continue to support the bill as the legislative session starts on February 12, 2008. You can email the updated executive summary or if you have the chance to talk to them in person, you can discuss and hand them the executive summary. Thank current supporters. In the House you can ask additional members to sign on as cop-authors. We are at our limit of 5 in the Senate. The current authors are as follows: House/HF2109: Murphy, E.; Thao; Fritz; Brod; Abeler; Huntley; Walker; Bunn; Otremba; Tschumper; Ruud; Loeffler; Heidgerken; Greiling Senate/HF1830: Kubly; Marty; Prettner Solon; Berglin; Koering Please Cc Kathy Hansen and/or Rick Panning on your written contact or let us know if you call or meet with a legislator. We will summarize this information for Vic Moore, our lobbyist. How to contact How to make an appointment with your state representative or senator: Go to the Web site www.leg.state.mn.us Click on the "Who Represents Me"? Click on District Finder This will bring you to a screen where you enter your address and ZIP code The next screen will show a map of the district where you live, along with pictures and contact information for your representative and senator. Click on the Web page beneath the picture of your legislator. The Web pages vary, but they always have the location and phone number of their office and email contact information. Call early to make an appointment to see your legislator in person at their home office or at their office at the state capitol. Point 2: For those of you working in a hospital or clinic setting, it is important that your administrators hear from you, especially those in management and supervisory positions. We have attached talking points for administrators. They need to hear from the laboratory community why licensure is important for patient safety and quality. These contacts will be helpful as we continue to work with representatives of the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Medical Association during the summer and fall to sore up support for the bill. As you talk to your hospital administrators it will be important that you ask them to contact the Minnesota Hospital Association to voice their support for the bill and to ask MHA to support the bill (or at the very least not oppose the bill) in the 2008 legislative session. Again, as you make contacts with your administrators, please communicate that information to Kathy and/or Rick. Point 3: The 2008 session does not begin until February 12, 2008. We are being assured that the first committees that we need to have hearings in will do so early in the session. This is the licensure subcommittee of the Health Committee in the House (Representative Thao is the chair) and the Health Committee in the Senate (Senator Marty is the chair). Even though we did a good job of getting strong co-authors for our bill in both houses, we need to continue to make contact and shore up and add additional support. Our opposition – College of American Pathologists/Minnesota Societ for Pathology/American Association of Bioanalysts – will also be contacting legislators to ask them to oppose our bill. In the last session we did get an early start before the opposition’s lobbyist was hired. They now have an opportunity to make those same contacts. During the summer we (Kathy, Rick and Vic Moore) will be meeting with four organizations to shore up support and lay the groundwork for the 2008 session. Mayo Clinic: As an organization they have stated that they will officially remain neutral on this issue. It is important that we firm up that position Minnesota Hospital Association: We are receiving mixed message from this organization and need to work towards support, or at the least, non-opposition. That is why the contacts you make with hospital administratiors are so important, Minnesota Medical Association: This organization gets different messages from their physician members who run physician office laboratories and the pathologists. Minnesota Department of Health: we are meeting in July to firm up the proposed relationship to house our licensure board structure within their organization. We plan to hold a coalition meeting in the month of November, as we approach the session. We will keep the group updated as we make progress during the summer.

Rick Panning and Kathy Hansen, Coalition Co-chairs

Minnesota Laboratory Licensure

Special points of interest:

· Contact YOUR legislators in the House and Senate

· Contact hospital administrators

· We need to keep the pressure on while the legislature is not in session