September 11: Improvements Still Needed in Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring Services for Responders outside the New York City Area
Released: 2008-01-22T00:00:00

Letter

Background

The tens of thousands of individuals who responded to the September 11, 2001, attack on the WTC experienced the emotional trauma of the disaster and were exposed to a noxious mixture of dust, debris, smoke, and potentially toxic contaminants, such as pulverized concrete, fibrous glass, particulate matter, and asbestos. A wide variety of health effects have been experienced by responders to the WTC attack, including injuries and respiratory conditions such as sinusitis, asthma, and a new syndrome called WTC cough, which consists of persistent coughing accompanied by severe respiratory symptoms. Commonly reported mental health effects among responders and other affected individuals included symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. Behavioral health effects such as alcohol and tobacco use have also been reported.

There are six key programs that currently receive federal funding to provide voluntary health screening, monitoring, or treatment at no cost to responders. The six WTC health programs, shown in table 1, are (1) the FDNY WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program; (2) the New York/New Jersey (NY/NJ) WTC Consortium, which comprises five clinical centers in the NY/NJ area; (3) the WTC Federal Responder Screening Program; (4) the WTC Health Registry; (5) Project COPE; and (6) the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance (POPPA) program. The programs vary in aspects such as the HHS administering agency or component responsible for administering the funding; the implementing agency, component, or organization responsible for providing program services; eligibility requirements; and services.

The WTC health programs that are providing screening and monitoring are tracking thousands of individuals who were affected by the WTC disaster. As of June 2007, the FDNY WTC program had screened about 14,500 responders and had conducted follow-up examinations for about 13,500 of these responders, while the NY/NJ WTC Consortium had screened about 20,000 responders and had conducted follow-up examinations for about 8,000 of these responders. Some of the responders include nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. As of June 2007, the WTC Federal Responder Screening Program had screened 1,305 federal responders and referred 281 responders for employee assistance program services or specialty diagnostic services. In addition, the WTC Health Registry, a monitoring program that consists of periodic surveys of self-reported health status and related studies but does not provide in- person screening or monitoring, collected baseline health data from over 71,000 people who enrolled in the registry. In the winter of 2006, the registry began its first adult follow-up survey, and as of June 2007 over 36,000 individuals had completed the follow-up survey.

In addition to providing medical examinations, FDNY’s WTC program and the NY/NJ WTC Consortium have collected information for use in scientific research to better understand the health effects of the WTC attack and other disasters. The WTC Health Registry is also collecting information to assess the long-term public health consequences of the disaster.

In February 2006, the Secretary of HHS designated the Director of NIOSH to take the lead in ensuring that the WTC health programs are well coordinated, and in September 2006 the Secretary established the WTC Task Force to advise him on federal policies and funding issues related to responders’ health conditions. The chair of the task force is HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Health, and the vice chair is the Director of NIOSH.

NIOSH Has Not Ensured the Availability of Services for Nonfederal Responders Residing outside the NYC Metropolitan Area

NIOSH has not ensured the availability of screening and monitoring services for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area, although it has taken steps toward expanding the availability of these services. Initially, NIOSH made two efforts to provide screening and monitoring services for these responders, the exact number of whom is unknown. The first effort began in late 2002 when NIOSH awarded a contract for about $306,000 to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to provide screening services for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area and directed it to establish a subcontract with AOEC. AOEC then subcontracted with 32 of its member clinics across the country to provide screening services. From February 2003 to July 2004, the 32 AOEC member clinics screened 588 nonfederal responders nationwide. AOEC experienced challenges in providing these screening services. For example, many nonfederal responders did not enroll in the program because they did not live near an AOEC clinic, and the administration of the program required substantial coordination among AOEC, AOEC member clinics, and Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai’s subcontract with AOEC ended in July 2004, and from August 2004 until June 2005 NIOSH did not fund any organization to provide services to nonfederal responders outside the NYC metropolitan area. During this period, NIOSH focused on providing screening and monitoring services for nonfederal responders in the NYC metropolitan area. In June 2005, NIOSH began its second effort by awarding $776,000 to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Data and Coordination Center (DCC) to provide both screening and monitoring services for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. In June 2006, NIOSH awarded an additional $788,000 to DCC to provide screening and monitoring services for these responders. NIOSH officials told us that they assigned DCC the task of providing screening and monitoring services to nonfederal responders outside the NYC metropolitan area because the task was consistent with DCC’s responsibilities for the NY/NJ WTC Consortium, which include data monitoring and coordination. DCC, however, had difficulty establishing a network of providers that could serve nonfederal responders residing throughout the country—ultimately contracting with only 10 clinics in seven states to provide screening and monitoring services. DCC officials said that as of June 2007 the 10 clinics were monitoring 180 responders.

In early 2006, NIOSH began exploring how to establish a national program that would expand the network of providers to provide screening and monitoring services, as well as treatment services, for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. According to NIOSH, there have been several challenges involved in expanding a network of providers to screen and monitor nonfederal responders nationwide. These include establishing contracts with clinics that have the occupational health expertise to provide services nationwide, establishing patient data transfer systems that comply with applicable privacy laws, navigating the institutional review board process for a large provider network, and establishing payment systems with clinics participating in a national network of providers. On March 15, 2007, NIOSH issued a formal request for information from organizations that have an interest in and the capability of developing a national program for responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. In this request, NIOSH described the scope of a national program as offering screening, monitoring, and treatment services to about 3,000 nonfederal responders through a national network of occupational health facilities. NIOSH also specified that the program’s facilities should be located within reasonable driving distance to responders and that participating facilities must provide copies of examination records to DCC. In May 2007, NIOSH approved a request from DCC to redirect about $125,000 from the June 2006 award to establish a contract with a company to provide screening and monitoring services for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. Subsequently, DCC contracted with QTC Management, Inc., one of the four organizations that had responded to NIOSH’s request for information. DCC’s contract with QTC does not include treatment services, and NIOSH officials are still exploring how to provide and pay for treatment services for nonfederal responders residing outside the NYC metropolitan area. QTC has a network of providers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and can use internal medicine and occupational medicine doctors in its network to provide these services. In addition, DCC and QTC have agreed that QTC will identify and subcontract with providers outside of its network to screen and monitor nonfederal responders who do not reside within 25 miles of a QTC provider. In June 2007, NIOSH awarded $800,600 to DCC for coordinating the provision of screening and monitoring examinations, and QTC was to receive a portion of this award from DCC to provide about 1,000 screening and monitoring examinations through May 2008. According to a NIOSH official, QTC’s providers began conducting screening examinations in summer 2007.

Concluding Observations

Screening and monitoring the health of the people who responded to the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center are critical for identifying health effects already experienced by responders or those that may emerge in the future. In addition, collecting and analyzing information produced by screening and monitoring responders can give health care providers information that could help them better diagnose and treat responders and others who experience similar health effects.

While many responders have been able to obtain screening and follow-up physical and mental health examinations through the federally funded WTC health programs, other responders may not always find these services available. Specifically, many responders who reside outside the NYC metropolitan area have not been able to obtain screening and monitoring services because available services are too distant. Moreover, HHS has repeatedly interrupted its efforts to provide services outside the NYC area, resulting in periods when no such services were available.

HHS continues to fund and coordinate the WTC health programs and has key federal responsibility for ensuring the availability of services to responders. HHS and its agencies have taken steps to move toward providing screening and monitoring services to nonfederal responders living outside of the NYC area. However, these efforts are not complete, and the stop-and-start history of the department’s efforts to serve these responders does not provide assurance that the latest efforts to extend screening and monitoring services to them will be successful and will be sustained over time. Therefore we recommended in July 2007 that the Secretary of HHS take expeditious action to ensure that health screening and monitoring services are available to all people who responded to the attack on the WTC, regardless of where they reside. As of January 2008, the department has not responded to this recommendation.

Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared remarks. I would be happy to respond to any questions you or other members of the subcommittee may have at this time.

Contacts and Acknowledgments

For further information about this testimony, please contact Cynthia A. Bascetta at (202) 512-7114 or bascettac@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. Helene F. Toiv, Assistant Director; Hernan Bozzolo; Frederick Caison; Anne Dievler; Anne Hopewell; and Roseanne Price made key contributions to this statement.

Appendix I: Abbreviations

Related GAO Products

September 11: Improvements Needed in Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring Services for Responders. GAO-07-1229T. Washington, D.C.: September 10, 2007.

September 11: HHS Needs to Ensure the Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring for All Responders. GAO-07-892. Washington, D.C.: July 23, 2007.

September 11: HHS Has Screened Additional Federal Responders for World Trade Center Health Effects, but Plans for Awarding Funds for Treatment Are Incomplete. GAO-06-1092T. Washington, D.C.: September 8, 2006.

September 11: Monitoring of World Trade Center Health Effects Has Progressed, but Program for Federal Responders Lags Behind. GAO-06-481T. Washington, D.C.: February 28, 2006.

September 11: Monitoring of World Trade Center Health Effects Has Progressed, but Not for Federal Responders. GAO-05-1020T. Washington, D.C.: September 10, 2005.

September 11: Health Effects in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Attack. GAO-04-1068T. Washington, D.C.: September 8, 2004.

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