MI Newsletter_June 2020

MULLAN INSTITUTE NEWS

H E A L T H + E Q U I T Y + W O R K F O R C E

"Health workforce policy is increasingly a health equity battleground." - Dr.Fitzhugh Mullan

Issue 1 | June 2020

RECENT PUBLICATIONS Ensuring and Sustaining a Pandemic Workforce

Letter from the Director

Modernizing Scope-of-Practice Regulations — Time to Prioritize Patients

Now, more than ever, we at the Mullan Institute are committed to our mission to advance policies and programs that ensure the health workforce has the competencies, opportunities, and courage to practice in ways that reduce preventable differences across groups in terms of access to quality care, health, and wellbeing.

Unethical International Nurse-Staffing Agencies — The Need for Legislative

This mission leads us, as individuals, and as an Institute focused on health equity, to feel a special responsibility in the face of recent events in our country. We stand with our communities in grief and indignation at the brutal killing of George Floyd and many other African Americans. We similarly share the pain of witnessing the tragic race-related health inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For those of us who study and advocate for the health workforce, it is clear that our country’s ability to adequately address both the highly infectious novel corona virus, and the endemic tragedy of racism in our country, depend, in part on how well we are able to manage the production, deployment, and protection of our health workforce. This means producing a diverse workforce with a commitment to social mission of health care; incentives that ensure the deployment of a range of clinicians to rural and underserved communities; and a recognition that for a robust social contract with our health workforce to flourish, health personnel must be treated fairly and, of course, their own health must be protected. The health workforce, worldwide, is under tremendous pressure, but in the United States it is particularly stressed. On the one hand, we herald health workers as heroes, while on the other, we are witnessing the refusal to institute national occupational and safety standards for airborne pathogens; insufficient personal protective equipment; reprisals against health workers that speak out; and the furloughing of thousands of health workers by hospitals that were overly reliant on revenues from elective procedures. Moreover, many small private practices have had to postpone primary, dental, and behavioral health care services, placing  them at risk of economic collapse, further reducing access to care in rural and underserved communities, and adding more health workers to the unemployment rolls. So how can we improve the protection and effective deployment of the health workforce during this pandemic? The Mullan Institute has launched three initiatives to make health workforce data and expert opinion available in real time to decision makers as they navigate this new and challenging landscape. The first is a State Hospital Workforce Deficit Estimator, which uses the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predictions of hospitalization to map state-level supply of specific critical care professions needed for this first wave of COVID-19. The second is a recorded webinar series on Emergency Policies to Address COVID-19,  which has engaged leadership from various sectors in the analysis of what policy changes are occurring and what more needs to happen to adequately respond to the needs of underserved populations. The third is a Contact Tracing Workforce Estimator that helps determine the number of staff needed to effectively identify and trace people who have been in contact with new cases of COVID-19 and slow the spread of the virus. Later this summer, we will launch a Health Workforce Diversity Initiative: a public tracking tool that will measure the extent to which our health workforce at the state and local-level reflects the communities they serve. We are also initiating a series of studies on race concordance between providers and patients and planning is underway for a Fitzhugh Mullan Summit on Racism and the Health Workforce for spring 2021.  We hope these new initiatives, along with the many programs already underway at the Mullan Institute, will form the basis for an expanded conversation about the importance of understanding how policies impact the workforce, and how this, in turn, affects the ability of the workforce to address health equity.

Emerging Health Workforce Strategies To Address COVID-19

The Civil Rights Doctor, Revisited

Changes and Variation in Medicare Graduate Medical Education Payments

The Role of the National Health Service Corps Clinicians in Enhancing Staffing and Patient Care Capacity in Community Health Centers

Social Mission Metrics: Developing a Survey to Guide Health Professions Schools

Use of Temporary Primary Care Providers in Federally Qualified Health Centers HIGHLIGHTS Patricia ‘Polly’ Pittman Installed as Fitzhugh Mullan Professor of Health Workforce Equity

2020 Class of the Atlantic Fellowship for Health Equity

2021 Applications  for Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity open Fall 2020

Social Mission Metrics Initiative

Beyond Flexner Alliance Blog Series

CONTACT US: 2175 K Street NW, Suite 250 Washington, DC 20037 www.gwhwi.com | gwmi@gwu.edu UPCOMING EVENTS Residency Fellowship In Health Policy Fall 2020 Beyond Flexner Conference 2021 

We look forward to continuing to engage with partners and colleagues around the world on these important issues.

Patricia "Polly" Pittman, Director