Ensuring universal access to quality laboratory services: CLMA White Paper. National Affairs Committee, Clinical Laboratory Management Association.

As part of its National Affairs Plan, approved in 1991, CLMA committed to publishing periodic position, or "white," papers to explore contemporary public policy issues in laboratory services administration. As CLMA's first white paper, this article is an in-depth analysis of the historical and economic background to today's clinical laboratory industry in the United States. It provides the logic and rationale behind CLMA's position statement on Health-Care Reform and the Clinical Laboratory. The statement has been formally adopted by consensus and has been widely circulated to both Congress and our membership. It will help form the policy basis for the development of the Association's legislative agenda on health-care reform. The principles are intended to be universal and apply not only to U.S. reform efforts at the national level, but also to states and other nations.