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the Meaningful Use (Stage 2 and 3) program. McCarty also urged Lovelace to reverse its decision to
require its RMA employees to take a different certification exam.
AMT’s Business Development Manager, Nancy Pudelek, received word from Mr. Molina in late February
that Lovelace had reversed its decision and would not require a different certification as a condition of
maintaining employment.
METC MLT Program – Based on information obtained by past president Jeff Lavender, AMT’s legal
counsel sent correspondence via email on 9/16/2019 to LTC Jose F. Quesada, Program Director,
Army/Navy MLT Program, at the Medical Education Training Center (METC) at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
The email correspondence requested an explanation and justification for METC’s exclusive arrangement
with the ASCP Board of Certification under which the military sponsors each MLT program graduate’s
registration to take the MLT(ASCP) exam. Because such an exclusive arrangement does not, on its face,
appear to be fully consistent with the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and the Defense FAR
Supplement (DFARS), AMT’s counsel asked LTC Quesada to provide justification for the exclusive
purchasing arrangement and requested that the Services revisit their current policy so as to give MLT
program graduates the option to take whichever MLT exam they may choose, at the military’s expense.
By letter dated October 18, 2019, a Legal Advisor in the Defense Health Agency General Counsel's Office
responded that:
National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) only recognizes ASCP exams for
Accredited Programs (Standard II b ), hence the need to purchase the examinations prepared by ASCP.
That being said, we of course are open to consider your client's certification examination if it meets our
requirements in the future, but currently we cannot since your client's product is not recognized by
NAACLS under Accredited Programs.
This response was forwarded to AMT’s outside antitrust counsel in connection with an ongoing
investigation of certain NAACLS policies.
MT Member
North Carolina
Legal counsel and AMT management attempted to assist a long-time MT member from North
Carolina who had been demoted from her senior technologist position with Duke University’s medical
system. The member graduated from a laboratory assistant program in West Virginia in the late 1970s,
and the school she attended had closed down in the 1980s. Efforts to obtain her transcripts have been
unsuccessful. After graduation, the member worked her way up the career ladder available at that time
and became certified as MLT(ASCP) and later, as MT(AMT). She had been performing tests that are
now categorized under CLIA as high complexity for decades.
She was demoted from performing high-complexity testing at Duke because she does not have
an associate degree and could not provide primary source documentation of her original educational
records. CLIA doesn’t accept private certifications like MLT(ASCP) or MT(AMT) as proof that an
individual qualifies to perform high- or moderate-complexity testing. The individual needs to produce
primary-source documentation of having completed the requisite education or training. Although she
can’t produce actual transcripts of her CLA training in West Va., legal counsel noted that if she can
document that she has training in all of the skills specified in Section 493.1489(b)(5) of the CLIA rules,
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