The bill's sponsors think tougher, more uniform credentialing will result in safer, cheaper health care, as better trained technologists will capture clearer images and not have to repeat exams.

"Obviously, if you get an image right the first time, it's less stress on the patient, there's less opportunity for error," Sen. Enzi's spokesman Craig Orfield told DOTmed News. "[Enzi] views it as good medicine on both sides - both for patient care and cost containment in health care."

A University of Michigan study from the early 1990s found that after the state passed a certification and education requirement, the technical quality of mammography increased around 30 percent, Lung said.

"With the economics of health care uncertain right now, we know that there are physicians' offices and clinics who are trying to treat patients as economically as possible," observed Lung, "and who may be using non-qualified personnel to [perform] their imaging exams, not understanding that an educated and certified technologist in the long run may command a little bit higher salary but will ultimately save the practice money in the number of examinations that have to be repeated and providing a more curative atmosphere for the patient."

The bill authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to set standards that have to be met if facilities want to continue receiving Medicare payments, Lung said. ASRT and the Alliance for Quality Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy, a coalition of 25 health care organizations, have drafted consensus standards they hope to show HHS after the bill is passed, Lung said.

As with the House's version of the bill, those states that already have tough standards would be exempt from the new rules, Orfield said.

It's likely the bill would require technologists from different disciplines to be certified by different boards, such as the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists. The bill would take effect by Jan. 1 2013, Lung said.

And although the bill technically only affects staff working with Medicare patients, ASRT believes the Medicare "trickle down" effect should result in the training standards required by the bill to be widely adopted.

"Knowing that Medicare sets the prevailing standards of health care through payment policy, it will trickle down to non-Medicare-paid procedures," Lung said. "It's just not cost-effective for a hospital to have qualified staff in place to image only Medicare patients and have non-qualified staff to image anybody else."

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