HHS Announces $250 Million Primary Care Workforce Investment

This week, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $250 million in new investments to increase the number of health care providers and strengthen the primary care workforce. This announcement reflects an increasing focus on workforce issues as part of health care reform implementation; the new investments were made possible by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

The funding, which will support the training and development of more than 16,000 new primary care providers over the next five years, represents one half of the new $500 million Prevention and Public Health fund for fiscal year 2010, created by the PPACA.

Among other investments, the funding will support a number of nursing-related strategies:

• $30 million for educating nurse practitioners, including incentives encouraging more part-time nurse practitioner students to pursue full-time education.
• $15 million for establishing new nurse practitioner-led health clinics, which assist in the training of nurse practitioners, to provide primary care health services, especially in underserved communities. 
• $5 million for states to plan and implement innovative strategies to expand their primary care workforce by 10 to 25 percent over ten years.

This investment intersects with the Center to Champion Nursing in America’s strategies to expand nursing education capacity and to highlight the role of advanced practice registered nurses in primary care.  The workforce development grants also will benefit states’ efforts to build a 21st century nursing workforce.

A fact sheet can be found at: http://www.healthreform.gov/newsroom/primarycareworkforce.html.