Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today introduced sweeping new legislation designed to improve health care access by ramping up the number of health care professions trained in the United States, and ensuring that they are placed in rural and other underserved parts of the country. The bill also would shift the focus of training to the health professions in greatest need, particularly primary care.   

Bingaman’s “Health Access and Health Professions Supply Act of 2009” outlines a multi-pronged approach to improve access to health care particularly to the one in five Americans who live in medically underserved areas. 

“Too many Americans already live in communities where health care services are scarce.  But the problem will only get worse as the Baby Boom generation ages and more Americans need access to health care.  We need to begin tackling this problem now by both training more health care professionals and encouraging them to work in underserved communities,” Bingaman said. 

Bingaman’s bill would accomplish both of those goals through a variety of initiatives. 

First, the measure would amend the Social Security Act to create a permanent National Health Workforce Commission – a 20-member panel of federal officials, health care providers, educational institutions, hospital representatives and others.  The goal of the panel would be to design, coordinate, and implement federal grants and regulations aimed at providing quality health care access to all areas of the country.

To attract more Americans to health professions, the bill would provide federal grants to middle- and high schools to create a “pipeline” of students interested in studying for health care-related fields.  It would do so through the creation of partnerships between schools and hospitals/community-based providers. 

To encourage service in rural and other underserved areas, the measure would increase funding for the National Health Service Corps and clarify existing law to ensure that participants in the corps and other federal loan-repayment programs for health professions can have their loans repaid without negative tax consequences.  It also directs the Surgeon General to establish a U.S. Public Health Sciences Track to train doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and mental health specialists, among others.  Students in this program would receive scholarship funds for each two-year commitment he or she agreed to serve rural communities.

Other initiatives aimed at bringing health care services to rural and other underserved communities include providing loans and grants to help hospitals start up community-based training, and making physicians working for the Veterans Administration eligible for loan repayment.

With regard to training physicians, the Health Access and Health Professions Supply Act of 2009 would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to allow certain institutions in medically underserved areas to increase the number of medical residents they may accept into their training programs.  And finally, the bill expands the Medicare medical home demonstration project to include a pilot program of 1,000 medical home primary care providers working in interdisciplinary teams.  These clinicians will provide the highest quality medical care using the best health information technology, and personalized, coordinated, and accessible care. 

“It is estimated that our country will be short 200,000 physicians and one million nurses by 2020.  If we act now we can avert this looming health care crisis,” Bingaman said.