WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) joined a bipartisan group of her colleagues in introducing new legislation during National Nurses Week to support hospital-based nursing schools and expand training programs for nurses.
The Technical Reset to Advance the Instruction of Nurses (TRAIN) Act would ensure hospital-based nursing schools that received funding support from CMS in the past can keep those resources and put them toward training the next generation of nurses without the threat of recoupment.
“The past year has reminded us of the critical role nurses and other medical professionals serve in our communities,” Senator Capito said. “Now is certainly not the time to put the pipeline for many of our much-needed student nurses in jeopardy. I am proud to work with my bipartisan colleagues on this common-sense legislation that would support our hospital based nursing schools.”
The TRAIN Act would make a technical correction to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program that supports the training of nurses and other allied health professionals at hospital-based nursing schools across the country.
Due to a technical glitch in how CMS administered this program in the past, many hospital-based nursing schools are being put on notice that they may be required to send millions of dollars back to CMS.
This claw back of federal funding could not come at a worse time, as hospitals and institutions of higher education have faced significant financial challenges over the past year in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. The threat of recoupment could curtail their programs or cause schools to shut down entirely, limiting our nursing workforce capacity for the future.
Nurses and other allied health professionals who are educated and receive their training at hospital-based programs provide high-quality care to communities across the country, including areas facing nursing shortages. The TRAIN Act would protect hospital-based nursing schools and other allied health programs across the country from potential claw backs, protecting the integrity of hospital-based nursing schools and ensuring our hospital-based training programs have the resources they need to train the next generation of nurses and allied health professionals. Nursing programs should not be required to pay for a problem they played no role in creating, at the cost of our future nursing workforce.
Specifically, the TRAIN Act would prohibit CMS from recouping payments made to hospital-based nursing schools and other allied health training programs in the past. The bill would prevent CMS from clawing back overpayments made in past years to hospital-based programs when CMS failed to make technical annual updates to the program.
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