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information is also collected. And as a matter of
efficiency when we used to be doing this, we would
send in several responses for several people at
one time,

DR. ZIEMER: Well, does that count as one
response, though? It it’s several people at one
time, you count those -- a response for each
person.

MS. DIMUZIO: No, it counts as a response for
each person We load it. up that way and it
matches up to the claim number.

DR. ZIEMER: Back to Jim.

DR. MELIUS: And acknowledging it's a
complicated situation, there may be situations

where the initial response provides enough

information to, you know -- that NIOSH doesn’t
need more, so -- you know, sort of -- may -- I
don’t -- some kind of a system telling you we --

you know, we really don’t need to keep looking for
that missing information, but -- but again, just
so we're not in a situation where, you know, a lot
of cases can't be dealt with because there’s just
no information or not adequate information, That

Like to obviously congratulate you on several

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still waiting for a response on. And we attend
all major meetings with the Department of Energy
when they're talking about their records and so
forth, and we're really beginning to develop a
really good relationship with the Department of
Energy and beginning to see more of the type of
information that we need to complete the dose
reconstruction on the first pass through of
requesting information, so...

This is our CATI information. Again, we've
completed case interviews for at least 10,830 --
excuse me, not completed, but we've conducted at
least one interview for 10,830 cases, and summary
reports sent to all claimants. The reason that
number's higher is because you can have multiple
claimants per case. Again, they're handling about
200 to 300 per week, and the CATI operation runs
very well. They’re very quick in conducting
interviews and so forth, so this is a very good
process that’s been moving along very well.

Cases staged for dose reconstruction, that
number represents a case where ORAU has sent a
letter providing them a listing of potential dose
reconstructionists who may be assigned to their

case. And then the claimant is given the

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profiles that they currently have, and those will
be mailed to each physician who’s participating in
the program.

MS. DIMUZIO: Oh, okay.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments?

Yes, Jim?

DR. MELIUS: I would -- number of questions.
First, it would be helpful for the slides, the
handouts that we get, to make sure that the things
are labeled, ‘cause when we -- on the page here
all I have is bars and no axes, labels or anything
and I may be able to see them now and remember
them now, but when I look at this two months from
now or something, I’1l have no idea what I’m
looking at. So I know it's -- it's tricky to do
‘@ause you want it to look good on the screen and
it doesn’t print out in black and white as well,
but anyway, it would be helpful.

MS. DIMUZIO: Sure.

DR. MELIUS: Secondly, I think I've -- may
have talked about this before, but on the DOE
requests, it’s clear that you're getting multiple
responses for each request for information from --
from DOE and -- but I’m assuming that when you get

back an aknowled-- I mean can you sort of describe

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October,

This chart here represents the number of
claims that -- the blue line represents the number
of claims that we received from the Department of
Labor. The pink line is the number of drafts that
have been sent to claimants, and the yellow is the
finals that we have sent the Department of Labor.
So you can see we're finally starting to address
the backlog, and we are now sending out more dose
reconstructions than requests that we're
receiving. In the month of December we sent out
17 percent more ciaims to claimants than we
received from the Department of Labor, and in
January we sent out 44 percent more. So we are
beginning to handle the backlog and get those
issues resolved.

Phone calls, we continue to receive many
phone calls from our claimants. We respond to
those calls, both NIOSH and ORAU, and we also
continue to receive e-mails from claimants, so
we're using all of the communication methods
available.

Recent accomplishments, we've appointed 167
physicians to the panels. That‘s an increase of

eight appointments since we last met in December.

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Opportunity to either select someone or -- from
that list.

DR -- DR’s that are assigned, 679, those are
actual cases that have actually been given to a
dose reconstructionist and they‘ve started work on
the dose reconstruction.

325 claims are currently with claimants.
They've received a draft of the report and we're
waiting the OCAS-1 from them. And final DR’s that
have been sent -- dose reconstructions that have
been sent to the Department of Labor for
adjudication is 1,502. And also that -- that
1,502, that represents a 50 percent increase from
when we reported to you in December, so we are
getting more and more out every day.

And this graph shows the numbers by month
that we have submitted to the Department of Labor.
As you can see, we're continuing each month to
send more, and this should continue.

DR. ZIEMER: Martha, is -- could you go back
on that slide? Is the last month on the right
then January?

MS. DIMUZIO: Yes. I might be able to go
back. Yes, s0 you go back -- the 284 was for

January, the 241 was December, 211 November, 237

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we had not received a response, so they wanted to
know what the ans-- they didn’t understand the
word "no", so they wanted us to explain what "no"
was. So in our January mailing we had a topic of
conversation, what "no" méans, so that they couid
have an understanding.

As a result of the January mailing, we've
received additional questions about what does
"pending" mean, so in the update that we send out
in March we'll be telling them about what
"pending" means and explaining that to them.

We've received many compliments from the
claimants that they're getting this information,
and so they're very happy about that. We’ve also
had, you know, responses saying please don't send
this to me again; I don’t want that. And we're
taking the steps necessary to, you know,
accommodate their wishes.

So that’s all i have. Does anyone have
questions?

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. We'll start
with Roy.

DR. DEHART: The web site for the site
profiles, you may not be aware that DOL has just

put together a CD that incorporates all site

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change?

DR. MELIUS: So moved.

MR. PRESLEY: Second.

DR. ZIEMER: And seconded. All in favor of
approval of the minutes, say aye.

(Affirmative responses)

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no?

(No responses)

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? Roy, I’m
sorry, I missed -- did you have a comment or...

DR. DEHART: Not at this point. I was going
to ask a general question about minutes generally,
not these particular minutes.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. You may proceed.

DR. DEHART: I would find, I think, with the
number of pages that we review, that at the end of
the minutes, action items drawn from the minutes
be listed.

DR. ZIEMER: You’re asking for a summary
just a summary page of action items?

DR. DEHART: That’s correct. Thank you.

DR. ZIEMER: I think we can agree to do that,
and we'll ask our recorder to help us pull those
together. Thank you. Good point.

I would like to point out to the Board that

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So there’s a variety of reasons as to why that
number is inflated more than just the single cases
we've received.

DR. MELIUS: I know it’s hard to summarize
that complicated a process, but I think it's --
you know, what I believe and 1 -- that you have a
process in place that keeps track of those that
when you don't have the information, you know
that. And I think it’s important to make sure
that what’s being portrayed to us reflects that to
some extent, particularly if -- if you're having a
site that just responds yeah, we got your request,
and then you don’t hear from them for a year, that
we're not portraying as saying that they’ve been -
- they've been responsive. And so, you know, if
there’s -- there's a way of sort of having some
sort of a date on -- keeping track of if a site's
not really giving you meaningful information and -
- I assume from what I’m hearing that you're
getting it, realizing that for individual cases
there are going to be, you know, ditticuities in
getting complete information.

DR. NETON: I'd like to offer

DR. ZIEMER: Jim Neton.

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) Jim Neton from

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that process so that we can understand what these
Statistics are? Are you getting back more than an
acknowledgement from them when you say that you
have a response? Is it actual information that's
useful and then describe a little bit of why
there’‘d be more than one response per person. Is
that worked at different sites or is it adding
additional information?

MR. ELLIOTT: It's a variety of those
different circumstances. A person could have
worked at more than one site, so we request for
all sites that they worked at so we get response
in that regard. We can also get a response that
Says we're still looking and we count that as a
response. We could get a response that says we
don’t believe we have any data at all. That’s a
response, as well, so that’s counted in that
number, We -- we -- as we -- as we go through and
screen the responses we have, if there are data
quality issues or if the information that was
provided is not in the right format, we send
another request back with more specific detail on
what we need and why we need il again, and sw
there’s another -- hopefully another response

comes back that provides the right information.

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We’re continuing to recruit actively for
additional physicians.

And again, as I said, for the months of
December and January, more claims were forwarded
to the Department of Labor for decision than
claims received from the Department of Labor.

Additional site profile documents have been
posted on our web site for review by claimants,
and NIOSH -- in October we initiated a quarterly
communication with our claimants. We send each
claimant an update on their specific case, and we
also provide them with a three-page activity
report which gives them an update on what’s
happening within the program.

Like I said, our first communication was in
October. From that communication we received
phone calls from claimants asking questions about
what was contained in the activity report, or
questions about the information that was provided
in a specific -- in their specific update. As a
result of those questions, for the January mass
mailing we were able to answer their questions,
one of their questions being -- in the October
report where it said have we received a response

from the Department of Energy, it may say no, that

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Energy, which represents 13,148 cases. So
obviously if an individual worked at various
sites, we would be sending multiple requests to
the Department of Energy, to the appropriate
office. And to date we've received 23,000
responses. And again, that represents 12,000
cases.

The age of the outstanding requests greater
than 60 days, 126; greater than 90 days, 156; 120,
97; and then greater than 150 days, 230.

This represents the eight largest sites that
have requests, and I would like to make one update
on -- for the Savannah River Site for greater than
60 days. We received a large bolus of responses
earlier this week, so the number that’s greater
than 60 days has been reduced to 50, and the
number greater than 150 days has been reduced to
11. And that's a result of information we
received earlier this week, so that number has
been significantly reduced.

We have been working with the Department of
Energy on getting in the responses correctly and
the type of information that we require to
complete the dose reconstruction, and we send them

monthly updates on each of the cases that we’re

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things. One, getting the -- the communication to
the claimants. I think that’s -- I think that
will be helpful. Again, it’s going to raise
questions to -- that you have to answer, but I
think that people usually appreciate knowing
what's going on, even it, you know, it isn’t --
they’re going to be delay that -- has there been -
- we had received a communication and -- about
updates to the web site in terms of how you're
going to track the status of the claims. And I
know I sent in comments, I don’t know if other
people did, but I was just curious in terms of the
implementation of that and particularly I --
again, my comment mainly addressed the issue of
can you have site information on there so people
know the general status of how things are --
claims are being handled at Savannah River, for
example.

MR. ELLIOTT: We are -- we have your comments
and we appreciate those. Also solicited comments
from DOL and DOE on this piece and we are working
to revamp our web site. There's a number of new
things that we are putting together to place on
the web site. And it’s not as -- you know, I

would think it’s just straightforward, let's just

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MS. DIMUZIO: Good morning, everyone. I’m
going to give you the program report for OCAS and
what we've been doing since the last Board meeting
we had in Las Vegas in December.

Since that meeting we've received
approximately -- well, for this year we've
received approximately 216 requests from the
Department of Labor. We are seeing a gradual
decline in the responses that we have received.
You can see there the number of cases that are AWE
and the number of cases that are non-AWE. The
number of cases in process is 13,550. That
represents the numbers that are actually in OCAS‘s
hands that are requiring some type of dose
reconstruction.

Here's a graph that’s showing by quarter --
fiscal year quarter the number of cases that we
received from the Department of Labor. The 216
for the second quarter of FY '04, that represents
just the month of January since that’s when the
quarter started, so as you can see, there has been
a cyclical decline in the number of cases
received.

To date, as of January 30th, we've requested

14,453 exposure requests to the Department of

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for our closed sessions there are generated -- for
the Federal Register actually -- what is called a
summary. We're required to get those back in to

the Federal Register within two weeks of our

closed session. Generally what happens is -- and
these are very beiefl -- is that Cori yenerates
those, They come to me for signature and then

they appear in the Federal Register. They don’t
come back to the Board for action. i simply want
to let you know that. The summary of those closed
sessions simply reiterates when -- when we met,
who was there and the subject of the closed
session, and affirms that that is the only item
that was discussed. So unless the Board wishes to
take formal action on those, do you agree that the
Chair can simply sign those and send them back?
There's no detail, of course, on the content -- or
the actual discussions.

(No responses)

Thank you. We're now ready to move to the
Program Slbalus Report. Martha DiMuzio is going to
make the presentation today. Martha?

And you should have a handout on this, as
well,

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT

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NIOSH. I'd offer some -- a little clarification
on what Larry said. It‘s rare that we do get a

response (Inaudible) we got your request

(Inaudible). Most of the additional response
we've received are -- we ask for a number of
different types of information -- internal

dosimetry results, film badge TLD results, medical
X-ray results -- and oftentime [sic) they don't
come over in a package. I mean they come in
different pieces (Inaudible) organization, s0 we
may get two or three individual responses to one
request (Inaudible).

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Let‘s get Tony, then
we'll come back. Tony?

DR. ANDRADE: I just wanted to mention that
-- a couple of points. Number one is I certainly
appreciate your concern, and it would probably be
good to differentiate between responses that
really have no data and those that -- that do send
in pertinent data. However, two points for
clarification and for just the general knowledge.
By law in CFR 830, sites are supposed to make a
reasonable effort to collect dose data from ali
previous employers. And I know that we certainly

make a wholehearted effort to do that, and so that

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