Correction: The 2013 U.S. House version of a bill to fund pediatrician training at Children’s Hospital went through the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Because of erroneous information from the staff of U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, this article incorrectly stated that the 2013 bill did not go through committee.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House voted Tuesday to approve funding that helps train doctors at children’s hospitals, including in Arkansas.
Arkansas’ four House members, all Republicans, said they voted for the legislation, which was approved by a voice vote rather than a roll-call vote. When a similar bill to fund the program last went before the House in 2013, Rep. Tom Cotton was the only member of the delegation to vote against it.
Senate Bill 1557, known as the Children’s Hospital [Graduate Medical Education] Support Reauthorization Act of 2013, provides funding to 54 children’s hospitals, including Little Rock’s Arkansas Children’s Hospital, to help maintain graduate medical-education programs to train resident physicians.
Arkansas Children’s Hospital receives nearly 60 percent of its funding to train pediatricians through the legislation.
In total, the bill authorizes $300 million in federal spending for the medical training each year through federal fiscal year 2018. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost $1.4 billion between 2015 and 2019.
The Senate approved the legislation by voice vote Nov. 12. The bill now goes to President Barack Obama.
Cotton of Dardanelle voted against a House version of the bill in February 2013 that authorized $330 million in federal spending each year through federal fiscal year 2017. That version was approved by the House 352-50 and has sat in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions since.
Cotton spokesman Caroline Rabbitt said the congressman opposed the funding bill in 2013 because the bill did not go to committee and was “fast-tracked to the floor with short notice for the vote.”
SB1557 was not reviewed by a House committee before it came to a vote Tuesday. However, Rabbitt said it was reviewed by a Senate committee, unlike the bill voted on in 2013.
She provided a quote from Cotton saying Arkansas is lucky to have a facility like Children’s Hospital.
“This legislation rightly supports our next generation of physicians in pediatric medicine,” he said.
Arkansas Children’s Hospital Chief Executive Officer Marcy Doderer said the $6.4 million in federal funds the hospital receives makes up the bulk of the $11 million it spends on training pediatricians.
Currently the money supports about 170 full-time residents, she said.
Doderer said that before Congress began funding the training in 1999, about 30 percent of pediatricians were trained at children’s hospitals. Now, about half of all pediatricians in the country are trained at children’s hospitals, she said.
She said it would be “devastating” if Congress didn’t authorize the funding.
“This is an incredibly crucial program to the continued success of pediatrics in our country. We believe it is absolutely an imperative that future pediatricians are trained in children’s hospitals,” she said. “This is our sole [federal] funding source to support graduate medical education.”
The $6.4 million in federal funding is about 1.5 percent of the hospital’s budget, spokesman Hillary DeMillo said.
“But it’s important to understand that 90 percent of the hospital’s overall budget is spent on direct patient care,” she said.
She said pediatrician training makes up a third of the remainder of the budget.
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s report, the funds approved Tuesday can be used in a variety of ways including salaries for medical students and to compensate hospitals for patient-care costs that are expected to be higher in teaching hospitals.
Other members of Arkansas’ delegation praised the bill’s passage.
“This is generally not a controversial issue. There were some folks that had some procedural issues with it, but I’ve been consistently for it,” U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., said.
“This is critical to Children’s Hospital and we all know that Children’s Hospital is not just the best in the state, it is known as one of the best in the world,” Griffin said. “It is a critical, critical institution not only for central Arkansas, my district, but the whole state.”
U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said he supports the bill because of what the hospital does for children.
“Anybody that’s had a child in Arkansas probably feels that,” Crawford said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/02/2014