Max Cleland: “as Chair of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, I am very pleased to have joined with Senator Tim…”

“as Chair of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, I am very pleased to have joined with Senator Tim Hutchinson to introduce an important change to the current method for hiring Department of Defense physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and other health care professionals. Like the private sector, the Department of Defense has been beginning to experience difficulties in recruiting certain health care professionals. At both the June 14, 2001, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on the looming nursing shortage and the June 27, 2001, Governmental Affairs Subcommittee hearing on the Federal Government's role in retaining nurses for delivery of federally funded health care services, I emphasized an alarming statistic that the Federal health sector, employing approximately 45,000 nurses, may be the hardest hit in the near future with an estimated 47 percent of its nursing workforce eligible for retirement by the year 2004. The need for military health care workers will be further intensified with the increased need for action by our national security forces in light of last week's terrorist attacks on America. Currently, the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, must process all applications and the response times range from 115 to 161 days. This protracted processing time contributes to the shortage of needed staff and sometimes losing a qualified applicant.”