AHA urges Congress to support physicians, access to care in statement for House subcommittee hearing 

The AHA provided a statement Feb. 24 for a House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing titled “Advancing the Next Generation of America’s Health Care Workforce.” Discussions focused on physician shortages in rural and other underserved areas and ways Congress could alleviate them through changes to Medicare’s graduate medical education program. The AHA urged Congress to pass legislation that would increase the number of Medicare-funded physician residency slots and fund 14,000 new slots for the next seven years, as well as a bill that would waive requirements for foreign-born physicians with J-1 visas to return to their native countries for a period if they agree to live in the U.S. for three years and practice in federally designated underserved areas. Additionally, the AHA advocated for Congress to pass legislation that would incentivize health care graduates to provide health care services in underserved areas, and a bill that would recapture up to 40,000 unused employment visas for foreign-trained workers. The AHA also praised the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Program, which supports primary care and dental residency programs and promotes opportunities for residents to provide care to rural and other underserved communities. 

Witnesses for the hearing were Emily Hawes, PharmD, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and director of the Sheps Center; Jason Shenefield, CEO of Phelps Health; Thomas Mohr, dean of the Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine; Jennifer Trilik, Ph.D., director of lifestyle medicine at the University of South Carolina, Greenville; and Andrew Racine, M.D., Ph.D., president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.