Latest News

Press Releases

5.12.2009

Decentralization Hampers Effective Compliance Education and Training AAHC Recommends Strategic Approach to Infrastructure and Leadership

4.23.2009

Health Workforce Reform Fundamental to Successful Health Reform, AAHC tells Obama Administration

3.12.2009

Health Reform Must Include Health Workforce, AAHC President Tells Congress

Read Dr. Wartman's Written Statement

1.23.2009

HIPAA Privacy Rule Limits America’s Promise in Research

Correspondence

04.20.2009

AAHC writes to Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, Special Advisor to the Director for Health Policy Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, to discuss the urgent need for comprehensive and coordinated health workforce planning

01.21.2009

AAHC writes to Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel and Ranking Member Dave Camp urging caution on including privacy requirements in the health information technology provisions of the stimulus package

Reports

01.21.2009

The HIPAA Privacy Rule: Lacks Patient Benefit, Impedes Research Growth

The Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) continues to have a negative impact on the nation’s research enterprise, according to the latest survey of academic health center research administrators and principal investigators

New From the AAHC

The Clinical Trials Administration Toolkit is designed to assist academic health center leaders, research administrators, and chief compliance officers in establishing, strengthening, and improving the administrative infrastructure for the research enterprise, particularly to manage and support compliance functions for clinical trials.
To order, click here.

Out of Order, Out of Time:The State of the Nation's Health Workforce, is a report undertaken by the Association of Academic Health Centers (AAHC) to focus attention on the critical need for a new collaborative, coordinated national health workforce planning initiative.

To learn more, click here.

Managing Emergency Preparedness is a concise guide to a well-organized, consolidated emergency response plan, as well as offering effective ways academic health centers and government leaders can help ensure that institutions and communities can respond to an array or emergencies and natural disasters.
Download (pdf)

UPDATE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dr. Steven A. Wartman Steven A. Wartman, MD, PhD

Health care reform must be linked with health workforce reform

As the White House and Congress seriously consider health care reform, it is critical that this reform be strongly linked with health workforce reform. It is critical that a reformed health system have sufficient numbers and types of health professionals who can provide the high quality care needed to best improve the health of patients and the public.

The AAHC report, Out of Order, Out of Time: The State of the Nation’s Health Workforce, discusses many aspects of current health workforce policy that are “out of order” – including inadequate access to primary care and shortages in many health professions – and why we are running “out of time” to change. The report concluded there is a systemic flaw in our century-old approach to health workforce policymaking and planning, in that responsibility for planning and managing the nation’s health workforce is fragmented among literally hundreds of federal, state and private stakeholders that rarely coordinate their policies or activities.

Even without health system reform, the health workforce is already under tremendous stress from powerful social and economic forces, including the aging of the population and the markedly increased need for chronic and long-term care. Our current health workforce policymaking and planning infrastructure is inadequate to meet these challenges, because it is hopelessly fragmented among a wide variety of stakeholders that respond to immediate needs largely in isolation and with little coordination.

Comprehensive health workforce reform is an essential element of effective health system reform, and that we need make workforce reform a national priority in conjunction with system reform. AAHC recommends the immediate appointment of a national health workforce coordinator to begin mobilizing current resources more effectively as an interim step, followed by the creation of a permanent, multi-professional, multi-disciplinary national health workforce planning body to bring together all stakeholders to address the challenges we face in a comprehensive, coordinated and strategic manner.

Health system reform cannot achieve its full potential without simultaneously reforming how we make and implement health workforce policy.