Congressional Update

from National FV:

House Passes Bipartisan Health Bills

The House passed five bipartisan health bills on October 28, including the following: 

• H.R. 2781, the EMPOWER for Health Act of 2019, to reauthorize funding at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for health profession workforce, education, and training programs. The bill would expand efforts to increase diversity, improve geriatrics education and training, grow the pediatric health care workforce, and create a new authorization of $5 million to increase workforce diversity in the professions of physical therapy, occupational therapy, audiology, and speech-language pathology. The bill passed on the House Floor by voice vote. 

• H.R. 728, the Title VIII Nursing Workforce Reauthorization Act of 2019, to reauthorize funding for federal nursing workforce development grant programs administered by HRSA for five years. These programs include traineeships, loan repayment, and scholarships for nurses to attain advance practice status and to become nursing faculty. The bill passed on the House Floor by voice vote.
  
• H.R. 647, the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act, to improve education, health care professional training, and research into palliative care and hospice care through grant programs that create Palliative Care and Hospice Education Centers, support projects to fund training of physicians who plan to teach palliative medicine, and which promote the career development of academic hospice and palliative care physicians in addition to nonphysician health professionals entering the field of palliative care. The bill passed on the House Floor by voice vote.