The Government Accountability Office has appointed 15 members to the National Health Care Workforce Commission, which has been tasked with aligning federal healthcare workforce resources with national needs.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the commission to:
- Serve as a national resource for Congress, the President and states and localities;
- Communicate and coordinate with federal departments;
- Develop and commission evaluations of education and training activities;
- Identify barriers to improved coordination at the federal, state and local levels and recommend ways to address them; and
- Encourage innovations that address population needs, changing technology and other environmental factors.
According to Hart Health Strategies, a bi-partisan consulting and lobbying firm specializing in legislative and regulatory healthcare issues, the commission is required to annually submit two reports to Congress – one starting no later than April 1, 2011, and the other due Oct. 1, 2011.
The April report will include a review of at least one high-priority area for topics such as:
- Workforce planning that maximizes the skill sets of health professionals across disciplines;
- Workforce demands for the enhanced information technology workplace;
- Proposals to align Medicare and Medicaid graduate medical education policies with national workforce goals;
- Ways to eliminate barriers to entering and staying in primary care;
- Education and training capacity and projected demands for professionals in nursing, oral health, mental health, allied and public health and emergency medicine; and
- The geographic distribution of providers compared to state and regional needs.
Specific topics to be included in the annual report due Oct. 1, 2011, include:
- Workforce supply and distribution with projected demands for the subsequent 10- and 25-year periods;
- Workforce education and training capacity with projected demands for the subsequent 10- and 25-year periods;
- Education loan and grant programs;
- Implications of new and existing federal policies affecting the workforce;
- Workforce needs of special populations with recommendations on meeting the needs; and
- Recommendations on creating or revising national loan repayment and scholarship programs to require low‐income medical students to serve in their home underserved communities.
The commission is also directed to study mechanisms for financing education and training for careers in healthcare and make recommendations to Congress and the departments.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires the Comptroller General to appoint commission members to three-year terms, with staggered terms of one to three years for the first 15 members appointed in September 2010.
“Today’s appointees bring impressive expertise and professional credentials to their role of advising policymakers on ways to improve the healthcare workforce, which is so essential to ensuring the health and safety of the American people,” said Gene L. Dodaro, acting Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO.
Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2013 are:
- Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN, a professor of Nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies, at the Institute for Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He will serve as chairman of the commission.
- Sheldon Retchin, MD, MSPH, vice president for health sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University and chief executive officer of the VCU Health System. He will serve as vice chairman.
- Brian J. Isetts, PhD, a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Care and Health Systems at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy.
- Harold M. Maurer, MD, chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
- Thomas Ricketts, PhD, a professor, in the Department of Health Policy and Management, at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and deputy director for policy analysis at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2012 are:
- Mary Mincer Hansen, RN, PhD, director of the Masters in Public Health Program, at the College of Health Sciences at Des Moines University.
- John E. Maupin Jr., DDS, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine.
- Neil M. Meltzer, MPH, president and chief operating officer at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore
- Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, a professor of public health and pediatrics at George Washington University.
- Steven Zatkin, JD, a consultant to health plans.
Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2011 are:
- Katherine A. Flores, MD, director of the University of California (UCSF) Fresno Latino Center for Medical Education and Research.
- Kim Gillan, a workforce development and training coordinator at Montana State University’s Billings (MSUB) College of Professional Studies and Lifelong Learning.
- Lisa Renee Holderby, director of health equity at Community Catalyst.
- Deborah King, executive director of 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds.
- Richard Krugman, MD, vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Colorado in Denver and dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.