News Releases

Healthcare Education Packets & Nursing Issues Focus of March Advocacy Efforts

In March The Center for Health Affairs distributed healthcare education packets to state and federal lawmakers to introduce and/or reacquaint them to Northeast Ohio’s most important health policy topics. Every two years, after the Congressional election, The Center puts together materials for new and returning lawmakers to ensure that they have access to the health policy information they need in their role as legislators. This year’s healthcare education packets included a number of materials aimed at shedding light on the Northeast Ohio healthcare environment including: 

• Hospital Finance Overview 
• Medicare Overview 
• Medicaid Overview 
• Dear Lawmaker Part I 
• Dear Lawmaker Part II 
• Finance Terms Overview 
• Economic Impact Report 
• District-Specific Hospital Directory 

State lawmakers received their materials in the mail while federal lawmakers received hand-delivered hard copies of their packets from Pam Waite, director of healthcare workforce and NEONI operations, who visited Capitol Hill to advocate on behalf of nurses and The Center’s member hospitals. The visits, which were conducted as part of the Nurse in Washington Internship program of The Nursing Organizations Alliance, provided an opportunity not only to distribute the healthcare education packets personally, but also to join nursing colleagues from across the United States to highlight three crucial nursing policy priorities: 

• Maintaining level federal funding for advanced nursing education grants contained in Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act 
• Preserving funding for the National Institute of Nursing Research 
• Allocating $20 million in federal funds for to support advanced practice nurse managed clinics 

To learn more about the materials included in the healthcare education packets or the federal legislative visits, contact Deanna Moore at 216.255.3614 or deanna.moore@chanet.org or Pam Waite at 216.255-3650 or pam.waite@chanet.org.