Biomedical waste disposal--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The NRC is amending its regulations to permit licensees greater leeway in disposing of liquid scintillation media and animal carcasses containing tracer levels of hydrogen-3 (tritium) or carbon-14. These rule changes will primarily affect NRC licensed hospitals and medical research institutions. Most licensees presently dispose of these items by sending them to a radioactive waste burial ground or by obtaining special authorization from NRC for incineration or onsite burial. Under the new regulations, the licensee may dispose of specified concentrations of these materials without regard to their radioactivity. The NRC is also amending its regulations to raise the annual limits for disposal of hydrogen-3 and carbon-14 by release to the sanitary sewerage systems. The rule changes will conserve waste burial capacity that is already in short supply.     

Institutional Radiation Safety Committee--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its regulations regarding hospitals licensed to use radioactive byproduct material for human applications. Currently, such a license requires that the hospital have a Medical Isotopes Committee to review clinical aspects of the use of radioactive materials within the hospital. The amendment requires instead a Radiation Safety Committee with a simplified membership that will focus on the radiation safety of workers and the general public. The rule change acknowledges the Food and Drug Administration's role in regulating the safety and effectiveness of radioactive drugs with respect to the patient. The membership of the new Radiation Safety Committee will include the hospital management and the nursing staff in decisions affecting radiation safety at the hospital and will be easier for smaller hospitals to recruit.     

Quality management program and misadministrations--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending regulations governing therapeutic administrations of byproduct material and certain uses of radioactive sodium iodide to require implementation of a quality management program to provide high confidence that the byproduct material or radiation from byproduct material will be administered as directed by an authorized user physician. The Commission believes this performance-based amendment will result in enhanced patient safety in a cost-effective manner while allowing the flexibility necessary to minimize intrusion into medical judgments. This amendment also modifies the notification, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements related to the quality management program and misadministrations.     

Standards for protection against radiation--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is revising its standards for protection against ionizing radiation. This action is necessary to incorporate updated scientific information and to reflect changes in the basic philosophy of radiation protection. The revision conforms the Commission's regulations to the Presidential Radiation Protection Guidance to Federal Agencies for Occupational Exposure and to recommendations of national and international radiation protection organizations.     

Private Land Mobile Radio Services--Federal Communications Commission. Final rule

The Commission adopts a Second Report and Order releasing reserved radio spectrum in the 806-821/851-866 MHz bands for Private Land Mobile Radio Service use. The rules adopted provide enhanced flexibility in radio system design and user options. The action is necessary to satisfy land mobile spectrum needs across the country.     

Wireless medical telemetry service. Federal Communications Commission. Final rule

This document allocates new spectrum and establishes rules for a Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS) that allows potentially life-critical equipment to operate on an interference-protected basis. Medical telemetry equipment is used in hospitals and health care facilities to transmit patient measurement data, such as pulse and respiration rates to a nearby receiver, permitting greater patient mobility and increased comfort. This action will increase the reliability of medical telemetry equipment.     

Revision of fee schedules; 100% fee recovery; clarification of size standards--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its regulations concerning the payment of annual fees to clarify the provisions that identify the size standards used to determine whether an NRC licensee would qualify as a "small entity" under the Regulatory Flexibility Act for the purpose of paying a reduced annual fee. This clarification is necessary because the size standards presented in the regulations did not clearly indicate the complete range of size standards adopted by the NRC.     

Eligibility rules for special emergency paging--FCC. Final rule

This action modifies 90.38 of the Commission's Rules by expanding the eligibility of end users to which special emergency paging licensees can provide service. Hospital paging systems could not be used to inform participants in an organ donor program of the availability of a suitable organ. The Commission has decided that patients actively awaiting an organ transplant should be eligible under the Special Emergency Radio Service to receive paging service.     

Amendment of the Commission's rule pursuant to its unregulatory program--Federal Communications Commission. Final rule

The Federal Communications Commission is amending the Rules concerning the land mobile radio services so as to eliminate those that are now unnecessary or outdated and to bring others into agreement with rules that were amended previously in other rulemaking actions.     

Medical use of byproduct material; policy statement, revision. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final policy statement; revision

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is revising its 1979 policy statement on the medical use of byproduct material. These revisions are one component of the Commission's overall program for revising its regulatory framework for medical use, including its regulations that govern the medical use of byproduct material. The overall goals of this program are to focus NRC regulation of medical use on those medical procedures that pose the highest risk and to structure its regulations to be risk-informed and more performance-based, consistent with NRC's "Strategic Plan for Fiscal Year 1997-Fiscal Year 2002." The policy informs NRC licensees, other Federal and State agencies, and the public of the Commission's general intentions in regulating the medical use of byproduct material.     

Quality management program and misadministrations; NRC override of OMB disapproval of NRC information collection request--Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Final rule

The Commission has voted to override the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) disapproval of the information collection requirements imposed in the final rule entitled "Quality Management Program and Misadministrations" (July 25, 1991; 56 FR 34104). As part of this final rule, the Commission is amending its regulations to reflect OMB's assignment of a new control number to these information collection requirements. The Commission reevaluated the need for this final rule and the information collection requirements it contains. The Commission continues to believe that its requirements for written quality management programs and misadministration reports, if complied with, have a reasonable likelihood of decreasing misadministrations (e.g., wrong dose or wrong patient) with a small incremental cost to licensees. Without the reporting and recordkeeping requirements, it would not be possible to implement and enforce these regulations effectively.     

Mental health and substance abuse emergency response criteria. Final rule

Section 3102 of the Children's Health Act of 2000, Pub. L. 106-310, amends section 501 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act (42 U.S.C. 290aa) to add a new subsection (m) entitled "Emergency Response." This newly enacted subsection 501(m) authorizes the Secretary to use up to, but no more than, 2.5% of all amounts appropriated under Title V of the PHS Act, other than those appropriated under Part C, in each fiscal year to make "noncompetitive grants, contracts or cooperative agreements to public entities to enable such entities to address emergency substance abuse or mental health needs in local communities." Because Congress believed the Secretary needed the ability to respond to emergencies, it exempted any grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements authorized under this section from the peer review process. See section 501(m)(1) of the PHS Act. Instead, the Secretary is to use an objective review process by establishing objective criteria to review applications for funds under this authority.     

Access charges; MTS and WATS market structure--Federal Communications Commission. Final rule

FCC, pursuant to the Fourth Supplemental Notice of Inquiry and Proposed Rulemaking published on June 21, 1982, at 47 FR 26668, adopts rules for the computation and assessment of end user and carrier's carrier access charges and the creation of an exchange carrier association to prepare access charge tariffs and distribute pooled access charge revenues. The Commission concluded that this action was necessary because existing methods of access compensation produced unlawful discrimination and preferences in interstate rates. These rules were designed to eliminate such unlawful discrimination and preferences.     

Private land mobile radio services; bio-medical telemetry operations--Federal Communications Commission. Final rule

This action changes rules in the Special Emergency Radio Service to permit the limited use of bio-medical telemetry systems on certain medical services VHF frequencies. The operation is to be allowed only beyond fifty miles from the center of urbanized areas of 600,000 or more population (U.S. Census of 1970). The bio-medical telemetry system is used to send electrocardiograms from patients to hospitals.     

Dental conditions. Final rule

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) adopts as a final rule the proposal to amend its adjudication regulations regarding service connection of dental conditions for treatment purposes. This amendment clarifies that principles governing determinations by VA's Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) for service connection of dental conditions for the purpose of establishing eligibility for dental treatment by VA's Veterans Health Administration (VHA), apply only when VHA requests information or a rating from VBA for those purposes. This amendment also clarifies existing regulatory provisions and reflects the respective responsibilities of VHA and VBA in determinations concerning eligibility for dental treatment.     

Data breaches. Final rule

This document adopts, without change, the interim final rule that was published in the Federal Register on June 22, 2007, addressing data breaches of sensitive personal information that is processed or maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This final rule implements certain provisions of the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006. The regulations prescribe the mechanisms for taking action in response to a data breach of sensitive personal information.     

Miscellaneous amendments--HHS. Final rule

This final rule will remove appendixes I and J, which contain the test of Office Management and Budget (OMB) Circulars A-128 and A-133, from 45 CFR part 74. It will also update several items to conform them to the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 and correct a confusing statement which resulted from two typographical errors in that portion of OMB Circular A-110 upon which this statement is based.