National Healthcare Reform

Summary:
Nursing organizations such as the American Nursing Association have worked directly with the Obama administration to help create legislation for the nation’s healthcare reform law.  
One of these provisions is The Reauthorization of Title VIII Nursing Workforce Development Programs. These programs provide sources of federal funding for nursing education. This will help to insure that there will be enough nurses in the future by providing many different types of grants to those in pursuit of a nursing education. Some of these grants include:
  * The Nurse Education, Practice and Retention Grants which helps to support schools and nurses at both the associate and baccalaureate levels.
  * National Nurse Service Corps which enables sixty percent of nursing student loans to be repaid for nurses that agree to work for at least two years in a facility that has a critical nursing shortage.
  * Advanced Education Nursing which gives grant money to nursing schools to foster education and practice for nurses in master’s and post-master’s programs.
  * Nursing student and nurse faculty loan programs that are established within schools of nursing to assist students pursuing masters and doctoral degrees. After graduation, up to eighty-five percent of the educational loans are cancelled if these loan recipients agree to teach at a school of nursing.
  * Workforce Diversity Grants which gives assistance to people from racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the economically disadvantaged
The new healthcare reform law also enables nurse-managed clinics to provide primary and preventive care, as well as a provision for graduate nurse education to support clinical education. Funding for National Health Service Corps will help health professional shortage areas within the United States to get the medical, dental and mental health providers they need to meet their healthcare needs.
The National Healthcare Workforce Commission is an independent group of... [continues]

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