LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS

 
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Nursing Community Conference call for November 12, 2009 (David Kay attended by conf. call)

 Title VIII update

Nursing workforce shortage: 

·         June, $200 million for Adv. Practice, $13.4 million for nurse repayment loan program/ nurse faculty loan repayment program.    (Nursing schools reported this was very helpful with such tough economic times). 

·         Still waiting for $50 million for equipment for all title 7 and 8 as requested by the President.

Recovery ACT:

Plan is to have separate plans for nurse loan repayment & faculty loan repayment. 

Budget Breakdown for all programs in Title VIII

$263.41 million Overall

·         Nurse faculty loan program Increased from 3 million to 7 million a year ago.  11.9 for 2009.  15 million in President’s budget.  Projected to be 16 million. 

·         Comp  Geriatric program  $4.57 million

·         Combo nursing scholarship program/Loan repayment program to give us more nurses:    expected $125 million.  Big increase.  (The majority of applicants apply for these funds). 

·         Minority scholarship: 16.11 million

·         64 million for advanced nursing programs.  No additional funds as

·         Big surge of funding for advancing nursing degrees from ADN. To BSN, MSN programs.

·         Misc. 

 

Title VIII is the largest source of funding nursing scholarship funds.

Fiscal year 2008, 103,782 students indirectly benefited from scholarships.   No 2009 numbers yet. 

Fund over 350 schools for advanced nursing programs. 

 Progress of the committee:

·         Website

·         Health Reform pushing it forward

·         Pushing Title VIII funding (the projected amount allocated to us is higher than we asked).  ? many more students would we

·         Brochure of the Community’s position to be shared with members of Congress by visiting nursing reps. 

 Strategies to get more funding for Title VIII:

·         Think ahead with 7 year plan to get more nurses in the pipeline for the national nursing shortage:

o         Ask for a constant $15 million more each year to fund Title VIII.  Goal is to achieve 44% of the 1 million nurses needed by 2016.  Equates to $2 billion investment over 7 years. 

o        If we get the $2 billion dollars, we would just to support a constant of 50,000 nurses a year over 7 years.

·         Ask for a reasonable amount of funding each year.

·         Grassroots approach.  Mobilize efforts with nursing voices to Congress at key times to get action. 

 What is thought from Congressional members of Progress of Title VIII

·         We don’t hear enough from nurses on these programs

·         Most members don’t even know what Title VIII is or what it is for.  This included members of the HHS committees. 

·         We need to do a better job of helping them know what Title VIII is and what it can do for the country’s nursing shortage.   

 

Action Item for the Gov Affairs Committee:  Subject: (National and State Nursing Shortage Prevention).

The Nursing Community suggested that we individually contact our local Governor and State law makers to remind them to not cut nursing education at the state levels for the upcoming state budgets due to budget shortfalls.  Cutting nursing education funding will only further put our country and states behind in the having enough nurses to care for our patients.    If you need material to share with your local leaders, use the Nursing Community Title VIII brochure to explain the nursing shortage [see the attachment ].  We need our nursing schools to be running a full capacity to keep the pipeline of nurses coming into our workforce. 

 Nursing Communi...II Brochure.pdf

Problem:  Many states are facing budget shortfalls due to the current economy.  As governors and state law makers have to cut budgets, we should remind them that cutting funding to state nursing schools will decrease the number of nurses that will be produced.  This is serious when there is a current and future nursing labor shortage.

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Current Legislation Under Review: