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TO: Schools and Lenders Participating in the Health Education Assistance Loan (HEAL) Program

SUBJECT: HEAL Technical Assistance Workshops for FY 1991
ML School Memorandum 90-24
HEAL Lender Memorandum 90-8

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) MEDLOANS program is sponsoring a series of workshops in January and February 1991. The AAMC has agreed again this year to provide meeting space for us to conduct HEAL technical assistance workshops at the conclusion of each MEDLOANS session. During the HEAL sessions; we plan to focus on the following issues:

• FY 1992 HEAL Budget Proposal
• Status of HEAL Defaults
• Status of HEAL Litigation
• Update on HEAL SLIF Balance Projections
• Results of AAMC Residency Deferment Match and Future Plans
• Other issues identified by participants in response to this memorandum.

We were pleased with the results from last year's Technical Assistance Workshops, and the quality and quantity of new ideas which were generated during the breakout session in each workshop. Therefore, this year we will conduct another breakout session.

This past year brought two major regulatory initiatives: a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for post-judgement collections; and a HEAL Performance Standard NPRM. Therefore, we thought that this would be an appropriate time to initiate a HEAL Regulatory Task Force. This mission of this Task Force is to review the current body of HEAL regulations to determine how to bring them up to date, delete any extraneous regulations, and to add regulations to fill in any regulatory gaps.

As part of the Bureau of Health Professions' and the Division of Student Assistance's commitment to Total Quality Management, we recognize that this effort towards regulatory reform must begin with you, our customers in the HEAL community. Therefore, we are enclosing a copy of the current HEAL regulations for your review and analysis. Through the "stress test" of your application of these regulations in the normal course of your work, you have probably identified where these regulatory gaps exist. Therefore, to initiate this effort, we will have a breakout session where you can identify and recommend areas for

change in the HEAL regulations. We will then explicitly consider your recommendations when we convene our Regulatory Task Force in March.

The HEAL technical assistance workshops will begin at 1:30 PM and end at 5:00 PM on the dates indicated and at the following locations:

If you plan to attend a technical assistance workshop, please complete the attached form and return it to us by January 10, 1991. HEAL technical assistance workshop participants will be responsible for all costs associated with participation. Participants will be also be responsible for making their own hotel reservations.

We greatly appreciate the AAMC making space available to us for this activity. Please call Stuart Weiss, Chief of the HEAL Branch, at (301) 443-1540 if you have an questions on these workshops.

Michael Heningburg
Director
Division of Student Assistance