By Judith Leavitt, MEd, RN, FAAN
There’s a tremendous amount of information available about the different congressional proposals on health reform. But it’s difficult to know how the proposed legislation might affect nurses and the profession. The American Nurses Association has just released an excellent chart offering side-by-side comparison of key provisions related to nursing in the two current bills, the House bill (H.R. 3962) and the Senate bill (H.R. 3590). These provisions include:
- increased financial support for nursing recruitment and advanced education
- increased funding for graduate education for nursing faculty
- increased funding for education for students who will practice in underserved areas
- establishment of a Public Health Workforce Corps
- increased Medicare reimbursement rates for advanced practice nurses, including nurse–midwives
- pilot programs to provide reimbursement under Medicare for nurse practitioners to create or lead “medical homes”
- increased reimbursement to school-based health clinics under Medicaid
There’s much more to be gleaned here, and the chart format makes scanning for particular points of interest easy. Have a look!
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