The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) is currently endorsing two important pieces of federal legislation to  help address workforce challenges facing the palliative care industry – and WiHPCA members. As such, NHPCO is encouraging our members – as well as your colleagues across the country – to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to support these two proposals:

• The Provider Training in Palliative Care Act
  This bipartisan bill (S. 2890) will leverage programs of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), which provides tuition assistance and loan repayment options to medical students in exchange for them providing primary care services in underserved communities, in order to expand the number of doctors and nurses knowledgeable in palliative care. The bill will allow individuals enrolled in NHSC’s Scholarship Program or Loan Repayment Program to defer their obligated service in order to receive training in palliative care for up to a year, thus building a cadre of healthcare providers with a both palliative care and community service experience.

• The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act
  This bipartisan bill (H.R. 2255 and S. 1024) will help address a shortage of doctors and nurses in the United States, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill will “recapture” unused work visas, enabling up to 25,000 nurses and up to 15,000 doctors to apply for visas. Congress annually authorizes thousands of visas for USCIS to admit foreign nationals to work in the United States and eventually pursue citizenship. Each year, unused visas are wasted, and since 1992 there have been more than 200,000 such wasted visas. Under this legislation, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) could repurpose a fraction of those unused visas for nurses and doctors.

It only takes a few minutes to contact your Members of Congress on these two bills through the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Hospice Action Network. The network is completely automated. You simply need to enter your name, address, and limited contact information and the Network takes care of the rest. CLICK HERE to be an advocate for strengthening the palliative care workforce.