$100 Million Investment Aims to Ease Health Worker Shortage

2 years ago 273
By Robert Preidt and Robin Foster
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Oct. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The National Health Service Corps volition person $100 cardinal to assistance tackle the U.S. wellness attraction idiosyncratic shortage, the White House announced Thursday.

That's a five-fold summation successful backing from erstwhile years for a programme that helps find superior attraction doctors for communities that conflict to enlistee and support them, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NBC News reported.

In speech for a fig of years of providing attraction successful areas that deficiency wellness attraction providers, doctors are offered indebtedness repayments and scholarships.

"COVID has fundamentally caused a laser absorption connected the glaring gaps and dysfunction crossed the American wellness attraction system," Tener Veenema, a student focused connected workforce issues astatine Johns Hopkins University's Center for Health Security, told NBC News. "Making investments to redistribute wellness attraction providers into agrarian areas, low-resourced areas, is truthful important due to the fact that we cognize however overmuch they are suffering from a deficiency of entree to bully wellness care."

The latest statistic carnivore that out: The United States mislaid 17,500 wellness attraction workers successful September, and 524,000 since the commencement of the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Whether you're successful agrarian America, oregon successful a low-income portion of America, that shouldn't beryllium a crushed wherefore you can't entree bully prime wellness care," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told NBC News. "And truthful we privation to assistance states that are going to effort to bash what they tin to support that nationalist wellness workforce successful those agrarian communities, those low-income communities, they're wherever radical request them."

States volition beryllium capable to use for grants until April and the HHS predicts it volition assistance up to 50 awards arsenic precocious arsenic $1 cardinal per twelvemonth implicit the people of 4 years.

"With these funds, states tin plan programs that optimize the enactment of disciplines and work locations, and tailor the magnitude of work commitments to code the areas of top request successful their communities," Diana Espinosa, acting head of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the program, told NBC News. "This concern volition marque a tremendous interaction connected entree to superior attraction and addressing wellness disparities astatine a captious time."

The task doesn't motorboat until September 2022, truthful it won't person an contiguous effect connected the wellness idiosyncratic shortage, but volition assistance successful the agelong run, NBC News reported.

More information

Visit the American Association of Medical Colleges for much connected the nursing shortage.

SOURCE: NBC News

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