Administration Invests $1.5B to Address Healthcare Workforce Shortage

Vice President Harris announced a $1.5 billion investment to respond to healthcare workforce shortages and improve critical clinical care in underserved communities impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The investment will fund the National Health Service Corps, Nurse Corps, and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery programs. These federal programs provide scholarships and loan repayment for healthcare students and workers; in return, they will commit to working in underserved communities. 

The United States healthcare workforce is expected to lose 60,000 primary care doctors, dentists, and psychiatrists over the next decade. In addition, the United States needs an estimated 158,000 new nurses every year for the rest of the decade to keep up with the loss. 

An obstacle preventing healthcare needs from being met is health education student debt. The annoucement states that an average of over $200,000 per student and results in students from underserved communities avoiding a career in healthcare professions.

With assistance from the American Rescue Plan, the investment will help to support more than 22,700, including doctors, dentists, nurses, and behavioral health providers, to work in hard-hit and high-risk communities. This will be the most significant number of providers in history enrolled in these community programs, according to the announcement. 

The Biden administration intends to award $330 million in American Rescue Plan funding for Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education. 

The funds will support the expansion of primary care physicians and the dental workforce through community-based primary care residency programs in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine-pediatrics, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, general dentistry, pediatric dentistry, or geriatrics. 

The announcement states that National Health Service Corps and Nurse Corps clinicians provider care for over 23.6 million patients. In addition, thousands of healthcare providers have worked by caring for COVID-19 patients, supporting their communities' mental health, administering COVID-19 tests and lifesaving treatments, and putting shots in arms in health facilities across the US.

These initiatives are directly in response to recommendations released by the Presidential COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. The final report outlined how the Biden administration could address systemic inequality in the health care system.

The investment announced is in addition to billions the Biden Administration has awarded to focus on health equity programs and initiatives, including a $785 million funding that supported community-based organization efforts in building COVID-19 vaccine confidence through high-risk communities.