AHA voices support for TRAIN Act

AHA yesterday voiced support for the Technical Reset to Advance the Instruction of Nurses Act (S.1568), bipartisan legislation that would prevent a Medicare payment error from affecting nursing and allied health education programs and direct graduate medical education. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last year discovered it had miscalculated payments to nursing and allied health education programs and direct GME based on Medicare Advantage use, and directed Medicare administrative contractors to recoup payments from these programs, which include about 120 hospital-based nursing schools. 

“This solution proposed by CMS will jeopardize the financial health of these essential hospital-based nursing programs and could cause many of them to close, amid a pandemic and a nationwide nursing shortage,” AHA said in a letter to Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va; Bob Menendez, D-N.J.; Rob Portman, R-Ohio; and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., the bill’s sponsors.