As the 118th Congress begins work toward 2023, hospitals and health systems continue to face significant challenges that jeopardize access to care for patients and communities. At the top of the list are workforce pressures and economic challenges.
Healthcare workers are physically and mentally exhausted as they navigate through the third pandemic winter. 100,000 or more the nurse is gone Occupations in 2021, and almost 70% say they have experienced verbal abuse on the job. Doctors are also struggling. close to 63% Report feeling burned out.
Hospitals and health systems have put a lot of effort into “caregiver care” and staff compensation, retention, and recruitment, but the bottom line is that there are now not enough clinicians to care for patients. and there are not enough clinicians in the pipeline to care for patients. An aging population, more complex diseases, and more behavioral health conditions.
At the same time, inflation and rising costs of essential medical supplies, medicines and labor are reaching historic highs.more than half of all hospitals was projected to suffer a financial loss in 2022. Outlook 2023 will also be very difficult for many hospitals.
Our mission to promote the health of all patients and communities has never been more important.
We cannot do this alone. All stakeholders must be involved: consumers, higher education institutions, frontline caregivers and healthcare administrators, commercial insurers, pharmaceutical companies and technology companies, just to name a few.
Likewise, all stakeholders at all levels of government play a role. Maintaining the ability of hospitals and health systems to continue to promote the health of individuals and communities is not a partisan issue.
Congress will pass at the end of 2022 and President Biden will law signed This includes preventing cuts in Medicare, expanding critical rural health programs, easing physician pay cuts, and increasing important regulatory flexibility for telemedicine and acute hospital care programs at home. provided support.
But more needs to be done. This year the AHA will work with leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on both sides of the political corridor, and next he will enact laws and policies in four areas.
- Ensure access to care and provide financial relief
- Strengthening health workers
- Drive quality, equity and change
- enact regulatory and administrative remedies
Ensure access to care and provide financial relief: We must protect funding for Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs so hospitals can provide a wide range of essential services to patients. In addition, we must continue to support 340B’s pricing program and recognize the special role that “metropolitan anchor hospitals” and rural hospitals play in the community. And commercial insurers must be held accountable for harmful practices that deny or delay patient care.
Empowering health workers: The lifeblood of our healthcare system is its caregivers and workers. We need to build stronger and deeper talent pipelines to support and protect them. Among other actions, we need to enact federal legislation that protects health care workers from violence and intimidation. Increase the number of eligible Medicare-funded residency slots to address physician and behavioral health shortages. We are working to solve the shortage of nurses.
Quality, equity and driving change: Quality care should never be determined by insurance status, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or geography. Policies need to be enacted to encourage hospital efforts to provide quality and safe care to all patients. This includes improving maternal and child health with a particular focus on closing longstanding racial and ethnic disparities. They also need to protect healthcare organizations and patients from the growing threat of cyberattacks.
Enacting regulatory and administrative remedies: Every day, hospitals and healthcare systems face the daunting challenge of complying with a growing number of regulations and commercial insurer requirements. This burden contributes to clinician burnout, drives up the cost of providing care, and in some cases delays needed care. We cannot improve care without addressing the burden of regulation. There is also a need to streamline the pre-approval practices of private insurers, as clinicians, not insurers, should determine the care patients receive.
For many people, a career in healthcare is a calling. His more than 6 million people working in our country’s hospitals and healthcare systems have been there for our families, friends and neighbors during the darkest times of the pandemic. They are there 24/7. we have to support them.
Rick Pollack is president and CEO of the American Hospital Association.
