Former HHS Secretary Tom Price: Immigration reform could alleviate healthcare staffing crisis
With healthcare staffing shortages reaching critical levels across the United States in all specialties, former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, MD, is calling for urgent, bipartisan immigration reform to help recruit and retain skilled medical professionals from abroad.
In this video interview with HealthExec, Price—a former orthopedic surgeon, Congressman, and HHS Secretary under President Trump’s first administration—outlines how targeted immigration policy could be a key solution to a crisis decades in the making.
"The workforce challenges that we have in healthcare are more broad than just physicians and nurses. In fact, it goes from frontline clinical workers, acute care service providers, all the way to home healthcare, nursing care and skilled nursing facilities. It's top to bottom, from all across the breadth of healthcare and the workforce. Anybody that's had any dealings with the healthcare system understands this," Price explained.
Warnings have been issued for years at conferences and by medical societies about growing staff shortages that would eventually impact patient care. Price said some patients now wait months for consultations with specialists, and days or weeks for imaging exams and procedures due to these shortages. The issue became even more acute—and accelerated—during the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of clinicians left clinical practice due to burnout, exacerbated by already existing staffing challenges. Shortages at hospitals and clinics are particularly severe in rural and underserved areas, he added.
"If you go to visit somebody in a nursing home, skilled nursing facility a long-term care facility, or even in an acute setting in a hospital, and you might notice that there's a wing of the hospital closed, or there's a wing of the nursing home that's closed. The fact of the matter is that that's not because people don't need those beds or need those facilities. Most often it's because we don't have enough skilled workers to be able to staff those areas," Price explained.
This has driven him to become a vocal advocate for using immigration reform to address health workforce shortages, which he describes as a win-win solution.
"If we move the immigration system to a merit-based visa system for healthcare workers, we could attract thousands and thousands of individuals to this country to help solve these healthcare workforce challenges," he said.
Merit-based immigration
Price argues that America’s immigration system should pivot to a merit-based model tailored to national workforce needs—especially in healthcare. He supports measures such as expanding visa programs to allow more international healthcare professionals to work in the U.S., citing policies like the Conrad 30 program and the bipartisan DOCTORS Act currently under consideration in Congress. However, he emphasized that additional immigration reforms are needed. Price believes lawmakers will respond if medical societies, clinicians, and patients contact their congressional representatives and clearly outline the issues—as well as how immigration reform can be part of the solution.
"There isn't any reason that we ought not marry those shortage challenges that we have with a common sense system in our immigration, to move forward with a merit-based immigration system for healthcare workers all across the spectrum. It ought to be an easy thing to do. It ought to be a bipartisan, collegial activity. And I know that it can get done if the folks who make these decisions hear from enough of us," Price said.
Trained here but required to leave
A particularly frustrating reality, Price notes, is that many foreign-born medical students train in the U.S. only to be required to leave after graduation. Current visa rules require these students to return to their home countries for two years before they can apply to immigrate and return to the U.S. He said this makes no sense—hospitals urgently need more doctors and often want to hire these residents full-time but are unable to.
“Roughly 1.5 million individuals in our healthcare education system are not native-born Americans,” Price said. “When they complete their training, we thank them and then tell them to leave. It doesn't make any sense.”
Instead, Price advocates for a policy that would allow these newly trained professionals to stay and serve American communities—especially rural or underserved areas, where the shortage is most severe.
Price supports provisions within legislation that would require foreign medical professionals to serve in designated high-need areas.
"This is not rocket science. This is something that can be solved, and it can be solved in a way that makes sense," Price said. "Policymakers can define where these individuals would have to serve. So they could say that 60%, 80%, whatever percent it is, must go to an underserved area, must go to a rural area, or to an area where there are shortages of those specialists in an urban area."
The Conrad 30 program lets foreign medical graduates stay in the U.S. after their training instead of returning to their home country for two years. Each state can keep up to 30 of these doctors to work in areas where there aren’t enough healthcare providers.
The DOCTORS Act, if approved by Congress, would allow up to 100 foreign medical graduates stay and work in underserved areas of each state
Healthcare immigration has bipartisan backing
Despite immigration’s contentious place in current U.S. politics, Price believes this particular reform has bipartisan appeal.
"This is not just a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. It's not just a legislative branch or an executive branch issue," Price explained. "We ought not make it cumbersome for them to be able to come here and to practice medicine. We ought to facilitate that immigration activity again so that it is not just to do what those individuals want done, it's to help solve these incredible challenges that we have from a workforce shortage in healthcare. So it just means that you've got to be able to communicate with the representatives in both the House and the Senate at the White House, make certain that they appreciate that the challenges are real."
He says now is the time for patients, doctors, and medical organizations to push for immigration reforms. Fixing the current shortage will take years, which is why swift action is needed to deal with the expected shortage of 90,000 to 180,000 doctors by the mid-2030s.
Dave Fornell has covered healthcare for more than 17 years, with a focus in cardiology and radiology. Fornell is a 5-time winner of a Jesse H. Neal Award, the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism. The wins included best technical content, best use of social media and best COVID-19 coverage. Fornell was also a three-time Neal finalist for best range of work by a single author. He produces more than 100 editorial videos each year, most of them interviews with key opinion leaders in medicine. He also writes technical articles, covers key trends, conducts video hospital site visits, and is very involved with social media. E-mail: [email protected]