Rounds, Cramer Introduce Legislation to Address Health Care Workforce Shortages, Prioritize Merit-Based Immigration
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) introduced legislation to address health care workforce shortages by recapturing previously authorized Green Cards that simply went unused. The senators’ bill also establishes merit-based immigration policies.
“Legal immigration is a critical part of our workforce,” said Rounds. “As the health care worker shortage continues to impact South Dakota and other rural states, we are in need of qualified, hard-working nurses and physicians to fill positions in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. I’m pleased to join Senator Cramer on this legislation that would increase our ability to provide timely, quality health care to South Dakotans.”
“In rural states like North Dakota, highly skilled immigrant doctors and nurses play a critical role in our healthcare workforce, sometimes providing the only specialty care available in the area,” said Cramer. “Our open borders and per-country caps are nonsensical and chaotic. It’s long-past time our immigration policies reflected a skills-based approach, welcoming hard-working immigrants who help fill the labor and service gaps in the U.S.”
The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act would make a limited number of Green Cards available to qualified immigrant nurses and physicians to address critical health care workforce shortages. The bill would also allow the “recapture” of Green Cards already authorized by Congress but unused in previous years, allotting up to 25,000 immigrant visas for nurses and up to 15,000 immigrant visas for physicians. This bill does not authorize any new visas.
This legislation would require employers to attest that immigrants from overseas who receive these visas will not displace an American worker. Additionally, it would necessitate eligible immigrant medical professionals to meet licensing requirements, pay filing fees and clear rigorous national security and criminal history background checks before they can receive recaptured Green Cards.
The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act is supported by the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations, Sanford Health and Avera Health.
“The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) fully supports any effort to strengthen the healthcare workforce as staffing shortages continue to be the number one problem for our members across the continuum of care, from hospitals to nursing homes,” said Tammy Hatting, Chief Operating Officer of SDAHO. “We need to streamline and expedite the hiring and placement of qualified immigrants in our healthcare facilities, and we are thankful to our South Dakota Senator, Mike Rounds, for cosponsoring this very important bill.”
“Sanford Health is grateful for the support from Senator Rounds as a sponsor of the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act,” said Corey Brown, System Vice President, Government Affairs of Sanford Health. “Workforce is a critical challenge in healthcare, especially in rural areas. Recapturing unused VISAs is a commonsense measure that allows us to employ internationally educated nurses and physicians who are an integral and important part of our workforce.”
“Maintaining a highly skilled workforce is vital to providing care across our rural footprint, which covers 72 thousand square miles” said Kim Jensen, Chief Human Resources Officer of Avera Health. “Often there are not enough nurses and physicians available to recruit to fill our workforce needs. The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act would help fill critical positions and offer meaningful work experiences for those who want to practice in the United States.”
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when too few people are still private pay, and too many people are enrolled in government health insurance plans which don’t cover the cost of the medical care, the amount of money available to pay the people who provide that care declines.
And then the number of people willing to provide that care dwindles.
People willing to work nights, weekends, holidays, and double shifts, during blizzards & tornado warnings, are not going to keep doing this for pay that is not competitive.
I quit hospital nursing in the late 1990s after working in 5 different hospitals and running into all the same problems: last-minute cancellation of shifts due to low census, even after arriving for work, being put on-call with a 30 minute response time without pay, working 2000+ hours a year in exchange for part-time status and benefits, having previously approved vacation requests rescinded (after buying non-refundable airline tickets.) Every hospital had its own ways of treating the nursing staff like a utility they could turn on or off any time they wanted. No other profession would tolerate the last-minute cancellation of a full days’ work without charging a fee or penalty. Nobody else who works more than 2000 hours a year thinks they are part-time employees. Nobody else would agree to stay close (sleep in the parking lot or lobby) in order to respond within 30 minutes if called, for no pay. Nobody else would put up with that crap, so I quit hospital nursing. I have heard that since then, hospital administrators have figured out that nurses are not single women with no dependents and they don’t live in convents across the street from their facilities. So that’s an improvement, but they still need money to pay them.
you speak rightly. people who try to actually fix it get kneecapped by the vested interests lurking in the shadows though, that’s been true since the fall of speaker gingrich.