Org Leadership & Governance 4

AHA.ORG | PAGE 10 OF 162025 ADVOCACY AGENDA

Workforce Shortages

� Address physician shortages, including shortages of behavioral health providers, by increasing the number of residency slots eligible for Medicare funding while rejecting cuts to Medicare graduate medical education.

� Encourage the continuation of visa waivers for physicians in medically underserved areas and recapture of unused employment visas for doctors and nurses.

� Address nursing shortages by reauthorizing nursing workforce development programs to support recruitment, retention and advanced education for nurses and other allied health professionals and investing in nursing schools, nurse faculty salaries and hospital training time.

� Reduce administrative burdens that take clinicians away from the bedside and contribute to burnout, such as excessive and unnecessary prior authorization use and inappropriate coverage denials that require substantive clerical rework by staff.

� Support apprenticeship programs for nursing assistants and other critical support staff positions.

� Adopt policies to expand loan repayment and other incentive-based programs to retain existing talent and attract new talent, including through continued funding of the National Health Service Corps and National Nurse Corps.

Workplace Safety

� Strengthen workplace safety by enacting federal protections for health care workers against violence and intimidation and providing hospitals with grant funding for education and training programs, coordination efforts with state and local law enforcement, and physical plant improvements.

� Reject additional federal workplace violence regulations that would be duplicative of the rigorous accreditation requirements hospitals already face and that would add administrative burden.

� Protect health care workers from threats against them in their homes by permanently removing the requirement that practitioners rendering telehealth services from their homes report their home addresses on Medicare enrollment or claims forms.

STRENGTHENING THE HEALTH CARE WORKFORCE