APHON and fellow Nursing Community Coalition members sent a letter to House and Senate leadership thanking them for their work to combat COVID-19 and outlining additional priorities for future COVID-19 legislation.

APHON joined sixty members of the Nursing Community Coalition and signed on to written testimony submitted to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The testimony included funding requests of $278 million for the Title VIII Nursing Workforce Development Programs and $182 million for the National Institute for Nursing Research for Fiscal Year 2021.

APHON signed on to the Alliance’s FY21 NIH appropriations requests, calling for increases in funding for medical research: $3 billion for the NIH and $500 million for the NCI. A request for $30 million to fund the initiatives set forth in the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research (STAR) Act was included.

Through the Patient Quality of Life Coalition, APHON submitted comments on the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule. The comments were submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and provide a variety of recommendations in support of increasing access to palliative care services.

APHON joined all members of the NCC and signed on to a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee urging them to consider and advance Title VIII Nursing Workforce Reauthorization Act of 2019 (S.1399).

The letter commented on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies supporting $10 million in fiscal year 2020 to help generate pediatric reference intervals from existing clinical samples. This funding would help create a more standard reference interval for a more accurate diagnosis.

The overall comments focused on ensuring that pain management policies continued to address the opioid epidemic and to ensure patients with serious illnesses had access to pain medications

APHON joined the Patient Quality of Life Coalition in responding to the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s request for information on ways to address health care costs. PQLC supported efforts to increase access to palliative and hospice care services as a way to lower health care costs.

APHON joined a letter that supported H.R. 6836, the CLINICAL TREATMENT Act. This bill would require that Medicaid cover routine costs associated with participation in clinical trials.

The Title VIII NURSE Corps Loan Repayment Program, one of the Title VIII Nursing Workforce Development Programs, was created to assist those nurses who are willing to work in the areas with critical staffing needs and depressed salaries. A last minute provision to add for-profit facilities to the program could put the entire program in jeopardy. APHON joined with the Nursing Community Coalition to support Title VIII Reauthorization as it currently stands.