Health screenings of Nevada Test Site workers go private

Ed Koch and Mary Manning

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

A federal program that has provided free health screening tests for thousands of Nevada Test Site workers for the past 11 years is being taken out of the hands of medical research universities and assigned to hospitals and doctors scattered across the country.

The Energy Department says it hopes to save money if the health screenings go through a private company.

The program targets workers who were exposed to silica dust, beryllium or asbestos - materials that can scar lungs and promote pneumonia, tuberculosis and lung cancer.

The existing program, which will be phased out by Nov. 30, had been run by three research universities - the University of Nevada School of Medicine, Boston University and the University of San Francisco.

The Energy Department in May signed with Comprehensive Health Services Inc. of Venice, Va., to line up hospitals and doctors to screen people who worked on nuclear weapons tests within 50 miles of their homes. Nevada screening sites have not been picked, and no screenings have been conducted since June 30.

Since May 39 former Nevada Test Site workers who live outside Nevada have been referred to the new screening program, said Wendy Benade of the Oak Ridge Universities office in Tennessee, which is helping to implement it.

The shift in who will conduct the screenings troubles Dr. Thomas Hunt of the Nevada Medical School's Family and Community Medicine Department. "That seems weird, having a corporation replace a university-based program," he said. "I'm surprised that an entity that has been doing screenings in Nevada for more than a decade has lost its funding and that the contract has been given to a private company that does not even have an office in Nevada."

Comprehensive Health Services conducts occupational and other medical tests for the federal Homeland Security and the Transportation departments.

Since 1996, 3,773 Test Site workers have been screened and 695 had physical abnormalities, the Energy Department said.

Nationwide, 48,383 Energy Department employees were deemed eligible for screenings and 3,396 had potential health problems, the agency said.

Although the Energy Department is responsible for identifying employees who have been injured or sickened through their work, the Labor Department determines who is compensated and to what degree.

The old screening program cost the Energy Department about $18 million a year, said Linda Haskell, program director at Boston University, the lead administrative institution for that program.

The Energy Department plans to spend $10 million to $12.5 million annually to operate the new program.

Screenings in Nevada cost about $100,000 a year under the old program, according to a three-year funding package that expired this year.

The screenings, which Hunt said would have cost $300 to $550 out of pocket, included chest X-rays that could reveal radiation damage or spots on the lungs from beryllium or heavy metal exposure. Some tests were for hearing, thyroid activity and other conditions.

Nevadans' participation in the program has been shrinking. About 200 people a year have sought cancer screenings the past two years compared with 800 a year before, officials said.

Because of the declining numbers, the Energy Department set plans in motion in February 2005 to eventually contract out the screenings.

At the time, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced that the Bush administration was expanding the screening program at no additional cost to taxpayers.