Policy Experts, Researchers, Hill Staffers Discuss Nursing Workforce Solutions to Health Care Reform at CCNA-Hosted Forum

Top researchers, nursing and health reform experts and Capitol Hill staffers met last Friday, June 12 at a forum sponsored by CCNA, Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to discuss the hottest topic in Washington: health care reform. With the President, members of Congress, and interest groups vying for the opportunity to steer legislation, nurses, doctors, insurers, hospitals—and perhaps most of all, patients—are hoping the bill that lands on President Obama’s desk will help end the current health care crisis. The forum’s key takeaway: nurses are an integral part of the solution to 21st century health care challenges.  

“We all know that the health care system is broken and isn’t meeting the needs of our current population—especially the older population,” David Sloane, AARP’s senior vice president for government relations and advocacy, told a packed audience at the Columbus Club in Washington, DC.

Several of the panelists authored studies released on Friday in Health Affairs on various aspects of the nursing workforce, including the temporary easing of the shortage, the increasing need for qualified faculty, and patient quality. The studies are available here. Susan Reinhard, senior vice president and director of AARP’s Public Policy Institute and CCNA’s chief strategist, served as the moderator of the first panel and described it as an opportunity to connect issues like health care reform, the cyclical nature of nursing shortages, and the lack of faculty and educational policy. During the panel, Elaine Ryan, vice president for government relations at AARP told the crowd, “Congress would be kidding the American public if we spent a trillion dollars on health care reform and didn’t have the professionals at the frontlines who can realize the promise of that kind change.” Nurses, she noted, are at the forefront of all aspects of health care delivery, which is why the nursing workforce is one focus of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Committee’s bill.

The second round of panelists examined strategies to increase the ranks of nurse educators and noted their importance to preparing the next generation of nurses. In a year when over 50,000 qualified nursing school applicants were turned away, Linda H. Aiken, a professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, said that without solving the faculty shortage, “it is a mathematic improbability that we will ever solve the nursing shortage.” Aiken recommends modernizing the way Medicare reimburses for nursing education to build, prepare and deploy a nursing workforce of advanced practice nurses who can become faculty. According to Aiken, these nurses can also enter practice and provide the kind of highly skilled care our changing health care system will demand. [Read more about Aiken’s recommendations.]

To solve the faculty shortage, CCNA director Brenda Cleary told the audience it’s time to redesign nursing education programs. Far from “reinventing the wheel in every school of nursing,” she said that new models like shared regional simulation labs that can be used by multiple nursing schools represent the “education of the future.”

The final panel focused on the politics of health reform and included policy experts like AARP’s Sloan, Wendell Primus, Health Counsel to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and others, who discussed current legislation and the challenges ahead.  Mr. Sloan, who moderated the panel, said that we must reform our health care system to meet the needs of our changing population. “Nurses are not only key to health care quality, access and cost, but to providing the kind of care that will be required in a reformed system,” he said.  As nurses approach Congress with suggestions, it’s important for them to speak with a unified voice, he added. “If different nursing communities are asking for different things, it will be harder to achieve what is wanted.”  

View Forum presentations.