HPNA State Ambassadors Quarterly Update

State Ambassadors March Quarterly Meeting Recap

Legislative/Regulatory Update

• Introduction of Gayle Gerdes, part of our new lobbying team in D.C., Health Policy Source. More information about Gayle, Dan Boston, and Keith Snider and their firm are available here. We are excited to have them representing us on our coalitions and working with us to develop strategies to raise HPNA’s profile at the federal level. If you have any questions for them, please let us know!
• Congress has passed the first set of FY 2024 appropriations bills but will need to complete negotiations on the remaining bills (including the Labor-HHS bill that funds the Department of Health and Human Services) by March 22 to avert a government shutdown.
• HPNA has endorsed the Future Advancement of Academic Nursing (FAAN) Act, and the Nurse Overtime and Patient Safety Act.
• The President’s FY 2025 budget was released earlier this month; it includes proposals to expand prescription drug price negotiations and vaccinations, broader continuous enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and additional investments in behavioral health and cybersecurity support for hospitals. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget request totals $1.8 trillion. Additional resources:
  Fact Sheet: The Biden-Harris Administration Urges Congress to Lower Drug Costs for Americans with Commercial Insurance | HHS.gov
  Statement by Secretary Becerra on the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget | HHS.gov.
  Secretary Becerra testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the FY 2025 HHS budget on 3/14, and the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a HHS budget hearing on 3/20 at 10 a.m. ET.
• We are awaiting a rule from The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which has extended telehealth prescribing rules until the end of 2024 to give them additional time to review comments on the proposed rule requiring in-person visits for teleprescribing of controlled substances. HPNA submitted a comment letter to DEA on 3/31/23 raising concerns about unintended consequences of this rule on hospice and palliative patients, particularly those in rural areas, specific examples of which had been raised by several HPNA members. The letter sought clarification on prescribing in certain instances and also called for consideration of more detailed recommendations developed by the National Coalition.
• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) received more than 50,000 comments on the Minimum Staffing Standards for Long-Term Care Facilities proposed rule. The rule has also generated a significant response from legislators, particularly those in rural areas. The rule was also mentioned in the President’s FY 2025 budget.

 

Advocacy engagement efforts

• We’ve had great feedback from members who’ve taken HPNA’s new Advocacy 101 mini-course, Grassroots Guide: Advocacy and Influence. Please share this widely—the course is available for .5 NCPD and is free for members and non-members. It covers hospice and palliative policy but is mainly focused on the federal legislative and regulatory processes and best practices for meetings with legislators and developing your story/ask. We are continuing to discuss follow-up educational programming, so please let us know if there are topics you would like to see covered in the future.
• HPNA will be supporting the Nursing Community Coalition’s (NCC) FY 2025 budget request for Title VIII and National Institutes for Nursing Research (NINR), and we have signed on to the following NCC letters:
• FY 2024 funding for Title VIII and NINR
• Opposition to legislation restricting access to CRNAs in the VA
• Thank you letter to sponsors of the Nurse Faculty Shortage Reduction Act
• Statement on the President’s budget
• HPNA continues to work as part of the Patient Quality of Life Coalition (PQLC) Legislative Workgroup to secure additional Senate cosponsors for the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (PCHETA) and will be reaching out to Advocacy Committee members with opportunities to engage with Senate targets through virtual meetings. Gayle will also be leading a group of advocates at the PQLC Hill Day in April. The legislative workgroup is focused on getting the bill to markup by Memorial Day and engaging legislators who have yet to cosponsor the bill. We also encourage you to share this link to our PCHETA call to action.
• The National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care signed onto a letter in response to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) request for information on the value-based insurance design (VBID) model. The letter underscores the importance of patient choice and timely access to high quality hospice care.
• HPNA continues to urge members to join our call to action on the Improving Care and Access to Nurses Act. Our fall postcard campaign to advanced practice registered nurses resulted in more than 500 messages sent to Capitol Hill on ICAN, and we continue to work with bill’s sponsors (and the new staffer in Rep. Joyce’s office) to advance it.

 

Joint meeting with HPNA’s Advocacy Committee

Our next meeting will be held jointly with the Advocacy Committee and will highlight the roles of each group and how we can improve information-sharing and communication. We also are inviting state ambassadors to share updates on work at the state level and how we can best support our members who are working on state advocacy efforts, as well as gather feedback on priorities to include in our federal priorities document for the next Congress. If you would like to present on your state-level advocacy work, please let me know and we can discuss the format, timing, and issue area prior to the meeting.