Initiative designed to bolster national health care workforce
Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–July 30, 2012. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that Rush University Medical Center in Illinois is one of five hospitals selected to participate in a new initiative made possible by the health care law to train more Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs). Under the Graduate Nurse Education Demonstration, collectively five selected hospitals will receive total reimbursement payments of up to $200 million over four years to work with nursing schools to train APRNs.
“With this important initiative, we are putting more advanced practice nurses on the front lines of our health care system and further strengthening and growing our primary care workforce,” said Secretary Sebelius.
APRNs—nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives—play a pivotal role in providing primary and preventive care to the public. Rush University Medical Center and four other hospitals will use the funding to increase the availability of clinical training opportunities for APRNs. Payments to the participating hospitals will be linked directly to the number of additional APRNs the hospitals and their partners are able to train as a result of their participation in the demonstration.
In the demonstration, half of all clinical training is required to occur in non-hospital settings in the community, and will provide APRNs with the primary care, preventive care, transitional care, and the chronic care management skills needed to provide effective and well-coordinated care. Students receiving training funded by the demonstration help fill gaps in non-hospital community-based settings, including in underserved areas.
More on the demonstration, operated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, can be found here: http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/GNE/.
Source: hhs.gov
