Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1667) to address behavioral health and well-being among health care professionals, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1667.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed an extraordinary amount of stress on physicians and other health professionals. According to a recent survey by the Physician Foundation, nationwide, half of physicians report feeling anxious due to COVID-19-related concerns, and nearly 60 percent report experiencing burnout. That is a significant increase from just two years ago.

Yet, many are not getting the help they need. Only 13 percent of providers have sought treatment to address pandemic-related mental health concerns. Nearly half of emergency physicians report not feeling comfortable seeking mental health treatment for fear of professional or personal repercussions, even though 87 percent say they have been experiencing increased stress.

Now, earlier this year, Congress took action in the American Rescue Plan to address these concerns. We invested in training for healthcare professionals on strategies to reduce burnout and stigma associated with seeking mental healthcare; and we provided support to the employers of frontline providers so they can better care for the mental health needs of their workforce.

These were important investments for a workforce stretched to the limit, but there is still more to be done. And that is why Congress must pass H.R. 1667, the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act.

This legislation is named in honor of Dr. Lorna Breen, a sister, friend, daughter, and emergency department physician, who tragically died by suicide after the physical and mental toll of the pandemic became too unbearable. Dr. Breen was fearful of seeking assistance for her debilitating mental burden, which left her despondent and physically unable to move from her office chair.

Earlier this year, her family testified before the Committee on Energy and Commerce about how the workload and stress of her position during the beginning of the pandemic broke an otherwise indomitable spirit of a compassionate woman with a strong love of her job and her coworkers and her patients.

The Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act will make significant strides in improving access to mental and behavioral health services. First, the bill authorizes grants for training health profession students, residents, or healthcare professionals in evidence-informed strategies to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders.

It will also identify and disseminate evidence-informed best practices for reducing and preventing suicide and burnout among healthcare professionals. The legislation also establishes a national evidence-based education and awareness campaign targeting healthcare professionals to encourage them to seek support and treatment for mental and behavioral health concerns. And finally, it calls for a comprehensive study to be conducted on healthcare professional mental and behavioral health and burnout.

This bill received unanimous support in the Committee on Energy and Commerce and is part of a series of bipartisan bills the committee has worked on to bolster and support our healthcare workforce.

I thank the sponsors of this bill, most importantly, Representative Wild, who was the lead sponsor, and my colleagues on the committee for their steadfast work in honoring Dr. Breen, her family, and the countless healthcare providers who will now have additional support and resources available to them. It is my hope that this bill will lead to more healthcare providers seeking help when they need it without fear of repercussions or stigma.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Wild), the lead sponsor of the bill.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stevens).

Madam Speaker, I urge support for this bill, which is bipartisan, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico (Miss Gonzalez-Colon).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Madam Speaker, first of all, I thank the leadership on our committee. I thank Mr. Pallone, Ms. McMorris Rodgers, Mr. Guthrie, and obviously, Chair Anna Eshoo, and our staffs for moving this legislation forward.

Madam Speaker, this is a very important bill. All of our healthcare workers, particularly in this COVID pandemic, are really heroes. They are, without exception. All of us know many of these workers because they are our neighbors and friends. And each of us have heard those cries of woe as they have done their job every day, every day, day after day for 24/7.

I can't imagine how they do it; watching so many folks suffer as they try to help them from their hospital beds. Passing on the sad words that they passed away to family members, maybe not even in person because of this terrible pandemic. And thinking of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that have died because of this awful disease, let alone so many more across the globe.

Well, one of those healthcare workers who was well-publicized at the time was Lorna Breen, a physician from Charlottesville, working on the front lines of the pandemic in New York, moving up there to try and help the need. And, yes, as it was mentioned, took her own life.

This was a national story. It gripped the Nation. I can remember watching the news show that week as this tragic story was portrayed. It outlined the severe stress that this pandemic has put on our healthcare workers and the need for the resources that they need to help them cope. The demands that our healthcare heroes are facing, they have not changed. They haven't changed yet. For months, for a year-and-a-half, they have been asked to care for communities in my district in Southwest Michigan and across the country 24/7 as the pandemic continues. This bill helps us have their backs.

Madam Speaker, I talk to major hospitals in my district every week. And the common refrain that we have been hearing throughout the State of Michigan is that our hospitals are still strained to the breaking point. Staff shortages are severe. I saw a story a few hours ago but I think the State of Maine is now taking up their National Guard. We have asked for national help from President Biden as well in Michigan. There have been too many examples of healthcare workers that are suffering from this enormous pressure as they fight the worst public health crisis in a century.

This legislation is going to help promote mental and behavioral health for those healthcare professionals, improving their overall well-being and maybe even saving their own lives. This bill helps promote mental and behavioral health among those working on the front lines of the pandemic. It supports training for health professionals to prevent suicide and burnout, and it increases awareness about suicide and mental health concerns among their peers.

I am glad that we are considering this important bill and that we will vote on it yet tonight. I look forward to having it being signed into law.

Again, I thank the bipartisan cooperation on both sides of the aisle. Hopefully, we can get our Senate colleagues--and I know that they are with us on this--to work together to get this bill to the President as soon as we can. We can't wait another day.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am ready to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, this is a great bill. We need to vote for it without delay, and I thank my chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of seven bills that originated in the Health Subcommittee of Energy and Commerce which I have the privilege to chair. These bipartisan bills address the following: health threats to newborns including stillbirth, newborn hearing loss, and birth defects; improving cardiac care and oral health literacy; providing needed mental health support to doctors and other health care professionals; and improving diversity in the allied health workforce.

H.R. 5487, the SHINE for Autumn Act of 2021 seeks to reduce the impact of stillbirth by increasing research and data collection to address the tragedy of the 24,000 babies who are stillborn in the U.S. every year. I thank my colleagues Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Markwayne Mullin, and Kathy Castor for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 5561, the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Act of 2021 reauthorizes programs at the Health Resources and Services Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to address hearing loss in newborns. I thank my colleagues Reps. Brett Guthrie and Doris Matsui for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 5551, the Improving the Health of Children Act reauthorizes the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. This critical center at the CDC helps advance the health of babies born with birth defects, developmental disabilities, blood disorders and other disabilities. I thank my colleagues Reps. Buddy Carter and Lori Trahan for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 1193, the Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act funds NIH and CDC research and public education for valvular heart disease. The bill is named in honor of Carol Leavell Barr, the wife of Rep. Andy Barr, who died last year of sudden cardiac arrest, and I thank him for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 1667, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act is named after Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency department doctor who died by suicide last year. Physicians have the highest suicide rate of any profession, and this legislation provides grant funding for suicide- prevention and peer-support at healthcare facilities. It also helps ensure healthcare professionals can ask for mental health help without facing negative consequences in their careers. I thank Reps. Susan Wild and David McKinley for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 3320, the Allied Health Workforce Diversity Act of 2021 establishes a grant program to improve diversity in the physical therapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, audiology, and speech-language pathology professions. I thank Reps. Bobby Rush and Markwayne Mullin for authoring this legislation.

H.R. 4555, the Oral Health Literacy and Awareness Act of 2021 directs the Health Resources and Services Administration to conduct a public education campaign to improve awareness of oral health. I thank Reps. Tony Cardenas and Gus Bilirakis for authoring this legislation.

I urge my colleagues to vote for these bills and I thank the members of the House Health Subcommittee and the bipartisan sponsors of each bill for their good work.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Upton for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1667, the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Act. This bill strikes close to home for me. I know a gentleman who served in our Armed Forces as an enlisted hospital corpsman and advocated for this bill.

He responded after the 2011 earthquake in Haiti, working in an intensive care unit and caring for local residents, even as an estimated 200,000 lives were lost. He and many of his fellow corpsmen were teenagers at the time.

Upon returning home, he thought, as this bill calls it, that he was simply burned out. Many of those he served with would abruptly leave the service or transition to administrative duties.

After suffering from flashbacks during emergency and medical situations, though, this gentleman would quietly leave the service as well, recognizing that he could no longer render the care that he had been trained to give. It would take nearly a decade for him to begin accessing mental health resources that he needed.

Madam Speaker, I tell this story, with his permission, of course, to make two points.

First, that widespread provider burnout can lead to staffing shortages.

Second, that many times we use the phrase ``burnout'' to hide deeper wounds. Burnout implies a short-term change, one that seemingly heals with a break or a vacation. But as our hospitals have overflowed in places with COVID patients, burnout can be something more serious.

That is why this bill is important. It establishes a communication campaign to educate and encourage providers to seek care. It will decrease costs by establishing grant programs for providers who use that care, and it will produce cutting-edge science on the problem of burnout among physicians.

Madam Speaker, let me close by saying that all healthcare providers should know that accessing the resources this act will provide is a good thing. It means they are still human enough to appreciate the tragedies they experience.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act, which will finally provide resources and support to our healthcare heroes who face burnout and mental health crisis as a result of their experiences with COVID- 19.

America owes an incredible debt of gratitude to these professionals who work to keep us safe and healthy. Doctors die by suicide at twice the rate of the general population. The trauma of their experience during COVID--and before--while treating patients is something we must address head on.

Dr. Lorna Breen was the emergency room director at New York Presbyterian Hospital and was a hero who embodied the spirit of service in our time of national crisis. She died by suicide in April 2020 at the peak of the COVID crisis in New York after contracting COVID herself, quarantining, and then returning to work.

Her father said, ``She was truly in the trenches of the frontline. She tried to do her job and it killed her. Make sure she is praised as a hero. She was a casualty of this pandemic as much as anyone else who died.''

I am honored in her memory to lead this bill to prevent burnout among the health professionals answering the call of duty. I thank my seven co-leads, Raja Krishnamoorthi, David McKinley, Judy Chu, Fred Upton, Haley Stevens, Morgan Griffith, and John Katko, and to note that the strong bipartisan support that this bill enjoys is confirmation that Congress can still come together to tackle big problems.

I thank Jennifer and Corey Feist, Dr. Breen's sister and brother-in- law, who have championed this bill from the beginning to ensure that Lorna's legacy is codified here in the halls of Congress. But most of all, I thank every last doctor, nurse, EMT, custodial staffer, food service worker, and especially our emergency room doctors who put themselves into harm's way to keep the rest of us safe. Our work to secure for you the support you need is far from over.