AANP Advocacy Center Re: H.R. 618, the Improving Access to Workers’ Compensation for Injured Federal Workers Act.

Please visit the AANP Advocacy Center link below and consider sending a letter to your Representative and U.S. Senator on key legislation that will be voted on in Congress soon. However, AANP requests to please not share the links on social media. 

U.S. House of Representatives:

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on H.R. 618, the Improving Access to Workers’ Compensation for Injured Federal Workers Act. This bill would modernize the Federal Employees Compensation Act (FECA) to authorize NPs to certify and oversee the care for injured federal employees, consistent with state law. You and your colleagues can send a letter to your Representative to urge them to VOTE YES on H.R. 618 by using this link to the AANP Advocacy Center, which only takes minutes to complete.

Under current law, federal employees can select an NP as their health care provider within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). However, FECA only permits a physician to make the diagnosis, certify the injury and extent of the disability and oversee the patient’s treatment and care when the federal employee is injured on the job.

In the 117th Congress, the House passed this legislation with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 325-83. We are making a strong push to see this legislation enacted in the current 118th Congress. However, we know that organized medicine heavily activated their grassroots networks against this bill last Congress, so we need every NP to send a letter in support of H.R. 618. We need to ensure that the Voice of the Nurse Practitioner® is heard in Congress.

U.S. Senate:

A second request for you and your colleagues would be to send a separate letter using this link to the AANP Advocacy Center to your Senator who is a member of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC).  On Wednesday, HSGAC is scheduled to consider S. 131, the Improving Access to Workers’ Compensation for Injured Federal Workers Act. This bill is the Senate companion to the House bill discussed above and having HSGAC consider the bill is a crucial step in getting the bill passed and signed into law.  Therefore, we also need you to please send a letter to your Senator urging that they vote YES on S. 131 in the HSGAC business meeting next week.

It is crucial that you send both a House and Senate letter using these two different campaigns.

Again, please do not share these links on social media.

Kind regards,

WRAPNN Board of Directors