Respiratory therapists are going to Washington, D.C. to meet with members of Congress to lobby for support of HR 2619 The “Medicare Respiratory Therapist Access Act”. You can help these DC-bound respiratory therapists joined by patient advocates and local area RT students in their efforts by contacting your own members of Congress just before they arrive in D.C.
Virtual Lobby Week is set to begin Friday March 21st through April 1, 2014
We hope this year’s Virtual Lobby Week will generate thousands of emails, letters and phone calls to Congress from respiratory therapists, pulmonary patients and supporters of the respiratory therapy profession. Our Virtual Lobby Week is scheduled right before the respiratory therapists designated as your state societies’ Political Advocacy Contact Team (PACT) representatives come to Washington, DC for the respiratory profession’s annual Capitol Hill Lobby Day, this year set for April 1st . RTs will again be joined this year by patient advocates and students from local DC area respiratory therapy education programs.
It is critical that we educate Members of Congress and their staffs on the value of respiratory therapists as experts in the delivery of pulmonary self-management education and training services for Medicare beneficiaries who have been diagnosed with COPD, asthma, pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary fibrosis and cystic fibrosis. This is absolutely necessary if we are to assure that these pulmonary patients have access to respiratory therapists in the physician practice setting.
Your emails, phone calls or letters will reinforce the message that your PACT representatives and our supportive colleagues will be delivering face- to-face with your Senators and the Members of the House of Representatives’.
Besides hearing from respiratory therapists, it’s very important that members of Congress hear from physicians, patients, family and caregivers. Senators and Representatives listen intently to voters from their home district and especially from those of you whose health can be improved when respiratory therapists directly assist you.
While you might not be able to “walk the halls of Congress”, your message of support for the profession of respiratory therapy and the patients you serve surely will.
Check out their website for additional information: https://www.aarc.org/advocacy/lobby_week/