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- Providing high-quality health care
- Growing the health care workforce
- Improving how HRSA works with communities
“The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) played an essential role in delivering results on multiple Biden-Harris Administration priorities, including improving access to health care services for underserved and rural communities, strengthening maternal health, expanding access to mental health and substance use disorder services, and growing the health care workforce,” said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson. “We are proud of the work we have done in the Biden-Harris Administration in partnership with community-based organizations, community-based providers, and health educators across the country to improve health outcomes for underserved and rural communities and look forward to this work continuing to grow in the years ahead.”
Providing high-quality health care
The Biden-Harris Administration:
- Delivered primary care to 1-in-10 people in the country regardless of their ability to pay, 90% of whom live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, by expanding HRSA-supported community health centers to serve more than 31 million patients.
- Secured bipartisan legislation that doubled the federal investment in maternal and child home visiting services to $800 million a year to provide double the number of pregnant and new parents with in-home visits from nurses, social workers, and other trained providers to improve maternal health and advance child development.
- Launched the first major overhaul of the nation’s organ procurement and transplant system in 40 years to improve the system for the more than 100,000 people on the organ transplant waitlist, including securing passage of historic bipartisan reform legislation, unprecedented increases in annual appropriations, and strengthened governance, transparency, and accountability across the system.
- Launched the new National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 833-TLC-MAMA, which has responded to more than 50,000 calls and texts from pregnant women, new moms, and their loved ones.
- Took unprecedented steps to integrate mental health and substance use disorder services into primary care by launching and growing mental health and substance use disorder services at more than 400 community health centers serving 10 million patients.
- Reversed long-standing federal policy that prohibited community health centers from engaging with reentry populations prior to their release from jails and prisons and made the first-ever federal investment to support this reentry work.
- Achieved a record-breaking rate of more than 90% of HRSA’s Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program clients reaching viral suppression—meaning their HIV is undetectable and untransmittable—through life-saving care, treatment, and medications for people with HIV and low incomes.
- Created new capacity in over 1,500 rural communities to combat fentanyl and other opioids by establishing new HRSA-supported rural substance use disorder treatment and recovery services.
- Took new action to engage individuals with HIV facing barriers to care and got over 40,000 people with HIV into treatment or reengaged in treatment.
- Added weekend, evening, and early morning primary care hours in 125 HRSA-funded community health centers that serve nearly 4.2 million people and see patients regardless of ability to pay; funded health centers will average an additional 20 hours of operation a week to improve access to care.
- Launched new community health center maternal health care innovations to improve early access to prenatal care and expand care services for new moms and their babies; health centers have delivered high-quality prenatal care to more than 2 million patients over the last 4 years.
- Kept thousands of health care facilities open and operating during the COVID-19 pandemic by investing nearly $24 billion in payments to health care providers and facilities over the last 4 years, including $8.3 billion specifically dedicated to providers serving rural patients.
- Enrolled over 2,000 birthing facilities in HRSA programs improving maternal health care quality so that hospitals are prepared to respond to the leading causes of adverse pregnancy outcomes like hemorrhage, behavioral health issues, high blood pressure, and other factors.
- Managed nearly $3.5 billion and over 1,900 Congressionally Directed Spending projects, including significant health system construction projects, key support for community-based organizations, and other initiatives as directed by Congress.
Growing the health care workforce
The Biden-Harris Administration:
- Awarded a record number of medical school and health professions scholarships to produce more than 2,900 new primary care providers who have committed to practicing in high-need areas through the National Health Service Corps.
- Recruited more than 24,000 new primary care providers to practice in Health Professional Shortage Areas through an unprecedented investment in loan repayment through the National Health Service Corps.
- Increased loan repayment amounts to primary care providers willing to practice in high-need areas for
the first time in decades and saw primary care applications increase by more than 30% in just 1 year. - Produced nearly 30,000 new mental health and substance use disorder treatment providers and launched a new initiative to add mental health training to primary care residency to train nearly 2,000 new primary care providers with mental health experience annually.
- Created new incentives for primary care providers who are able to deliver care in Spanish through enhanced loan repayment and new investments to support clinical training of medical residents treating patients with limited English proficiency.
- Launched new incentives and new training programs to grow the maternal care workforce by over 5,800 providers, including obstetricians, nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, and community-based doulas, with an emphasis on providing care in maternity care deserts.
- Produced over 46,500 new nurses, including new investments in community college-to-Registered Nurse programs, and created novel programs to support more clinical nursing faculty to address capacity barriers to schools training more nurses.
- Launched and expanded nearly 70 statewide physician mental health tele-consultation lines for pediatricians and obstetricians/midwives to directly access child and perinatal psychiatrists for real-time help with complex patient needs.
- Graduated nearly 1,300 new primary care physicians, including psychiatrists and obstetricians, as well as dentists, from HRSA’s innovative training program that anchors primary care residency in outpatient community settings as opposed to large acute care hospitals.
- Produced approximately 100 new physicians trained in rural areas through residencies created under HRSA’s Rural Residency Development Program.
- Made an historic investment in training more than 13,000 new community health workers to help patients get engaged in and stay connected to care.
- Launched a new interstate compact to improve access to mental health care by making it easier for social workers to practice across state lines and provide telehealth services.
Improving how HRSA works with communities
The Biden-Harris Administration:
- Implemented major reforms to simplify HRSA funding applications, making it easier to apply for HRSA support.
- Revamped the HRSA website to make it easier to find free or low-cost HRSA-supported health services in your community.
- Launched a redesigned and better targeted grantee survey to improve customer experience with HRSA and ensure HRSA’s processes are informed by community partners.
- Created initiatives—like the HRSA Enhancing Maternal Health Initiative—focused on giving the recipients of HRSA-supported services a leading voice in HRSA’s policy and program work.
- Launched the HRSA Health Equity Fellows early career program to build on and expand the HRSA Scholars Program to continue to recruit a HRSA workforce that reflects the communities we serve.
- Ensured HRSA reflected our values by significantly increasing our workforce’s eligibility for the HRSA child-care subsidy, making it among the highest threshold in government, as we work to address these and other social determinants of health for those we serve.
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