STAND. COM. REP. NO. 916

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    H.B. No. 373

 

 

 

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2013

State of Hawaii

 

Madam:

 

     Your Committee on Health, to which was referred H.B. No. 373 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO MAMMOGRAPHY REPORTING,"

 

begs leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to require health care facilities performing mammography exams to provide patients categorized by the facilities as having dense breast tissue with a mammography report and notification about dense breast tissue and associated cancer risks and supplemental screening benefits.

 

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from Are You Dense Advocacy, Inc. and numerous individuals.

 

     Your Committee finds that dense breast tissue can make cancer detection through normal mammography screening difficult.  Because of the dense nature of the tissue, normal mammography screening may detect the presence of cancer in only about fifty percent of cases.  Your Committee further finds that approximately forty percent of women have dense breast tissue, which is the strongest predictor of the failure of mammography screening to detect cancer.  Your Committee also finds it necessary to require health providers performing mammography exams to inform women with dense breast tissue of that fact and to advise them of the cancer risks associated with dense breast tissue as well as the benefits of supplemental cancer screening.

 

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 373, and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be placed on the calendar for Third Reading.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

 

 

 

____________________________

JOSH GREEN, Chair