Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) recently introduced the bipartisan Opioid Workforce Act of 2021 (S. 1438). The House will likely introduce a similar version of the legislation soon.
The GNYHA-supported bill addresses the nation’s opioid crisis by funding 1,000 Medicare-reimbursed residency positions in teaching hospitals that have or are in the process of establishing approved residency programs in addiction medicine, addiction psychiatry, or pain medicine. The bill would increase an extremely vulnerable population’s access to high-quality care and strengthen the physician workforce available to serve on the opioid crisis’s frontlines.
GNYHA also supports the bipartisan Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2021 (H.R. 2256/S. 834), which would increase the number of Medicare-reimbursed residency positions by 14,000 over seven years and would allow teaching hospitals to expand their residency programs across many specialties. Together, the two bills will help teaching hospitals meet local and national workforce needs, including in the disciplines needed to address the opioid crisis.