September 9, 2025
The Honorable Brad Schneider
House of Representatives
300 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Don Bacon
House of Representatives
2104 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Dick Durbin
United States Senate
711 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Kevin Cramer
United States Senate
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representatives Schneider and Bacon, [and Senators Cramer and Durbin],
The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), representing the nation’s hospitalists, is pleased to support The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act. This bipartisan legislation will recapture unused employment-based visas and utilize them to help fill health care staffing shortages by expediting processing for immigrant physicians and nurses.
Hospitalists are front-line clinicians in America’s acute care hospitals and focus on the general medical care of hospitalized patients. For hospitalists, ongoing staffing shortages are a result of multiple compounding factors, including burnout, high turnover, and financial pressures. Staffing shortages negatively impact our ability to care for patients and harm the entire healthcare system. While holistically addressing staffing shortages will require a multipronged approach, bolstering our workforce with highly skilled immigrant clinicians will help alleviate staffing shortages in the immediate future.
As the United States continues to face significant healthcare staffing challenges, we must utilize all available tools to expand the healthcare workforce so patients across the country have access to the healthcare they need. This legislation will ensure visas for medical workers are processed in a timely manner, alleviate some of the green card backlog for physicians and nurses, and increase the numbers of our available healthcare workforce.
SHM is pleased to offer our support for the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act and stands ready to work towards its passage.
Sincerely,
Chad T. Whelan, MD, MHSA, SFHM
President
Society of Hospital Medicine