Groups hail funding for nurse training

Interest groups that favor enhanced nursing education are hailing a $200 million appropriation buried in the federal healthcare reform law that creates a demonstration program to educate more advanced-practice nurses to provide primary and preventive care and chronic care management.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama last week directs the HHS to establish the Graduate Nurse Education Demonstration, which will name up to five hospitals nationally to receive federal funding to train greater numbers of advanced practice nurses. The subcategories are clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners, certified-registered nurse anesthetists, and certified-nurse midwives.

Under the demonstration program, hospitals must partner—and share the federal funds—with at least one qualified-nursing education program and at least two community-based health centers or clinics. The programs must increase their total number of nurses educated through the programs, as compared to a baseline of the average number of graduates over the past five years.

The four-year program will receive $50 million annually through Medicare, and then result in the creation of a report to Congress on its results by 2017. The AARP hailed the program as a way to transform Medicare-funded nursing education by targeting money to educate nurses with specific skills needed for Medicare patients.

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