SHM Supports the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act

Download Letter to Senators Purdue, Durbin, Young, Coons, Cornyn, and Leahy

Download Letter to Representatives Schneider, Finkenauer, Cole, and Bacon

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), representing the nation’s hospitalists, is pleased to support The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act. This bipartisan legislation will recapture 40,000 unused employment-based visas and using them to expedite processing for immigrant doctors and nurses. This will fill health care staffing shortages and ensure patients across the country have access to high-quality medical care.

Hospitalists are front-line clinicians in America’s acute care hospitals and focus on the general medical care of hospitalized patients. As a result, our members are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic caring for patients each day. Numerous hospitalists are highly trained immigrant physicians, many of whom are prevented from going where their expertise is needed most because of green card and visa backlogs.

In light of COVID-19, we must utilize all tools necessary to expand the healthcare provider workforce. This legislation will ensure visas for medical workers are processed in a timely manner, alleviate some of the green card backlog for physicians and nurses, and ultimately increase the numbers of our available healthcare workforce. Importantly, this legislation will also protect families by allowing spouses and children to join healthcare workers in the United States.

As the United States continues to face unprecedented challenges in facing COVID19, this legislation will help alleviate many of the barriers hospitalists face in fully engaging the fight against COVID-19. SHM is pleased to offer our support of the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act and stands ready to support its passage.

Sincerely,
Danielle Scheurer, MD, MSCR, SFHM
President, Society of Hospital Medicine