Critical Access to Clinical Lab Services Act of 2005

H.R. 1016, the Critical Access to Clinical Lab Services Act of 2005, aimed to change how Medicare pays for laboratory tests performed by small, rural facilities known as Critical Access Hospitals. The bill would have allowed these hospitals to receive higher cost-based reimbursements for lab services regardless of whether the patient was physically present at the hospital when their specimen was collected. For citizens in rural areas, this measure was intended to help keep local hospital labs financially viable and ensure residents could access diagnostic testing close to home without requiring the hospital to meet strict administrative outpatient registration rules for every test.