Bill would create fund to produce more Texas health professionals

Although she acknowledges it sounds cliché, Natalia Glenn was drawn to the nursing profession at a young age because she knew she always wanted to help people.

While a student at Fort Worth’s Amon Carter-Riverside High School, she had ample opportunities to fully explore science through the school’s medical academy, and it helped inform her decision to pursue nursing at the college level. So she applied to Texas Woman’s University in Denton, which she learned had a nursing program with a strong reputation.

After she was admitted in 2023, Glenn discovered how competitive nursing programs were, so she worked hard to earn good grades and connected with study groups to sharpen her focus.

“It’s a lot of time studying and sacrifices you have to make,” Glenn recalled.

Often, many Texas undergraduates who have the academic credentials to be successful nursing students don’t get the chance simply because there aren’t enough slots to accommodate them at the state’s 48 colleges and universities that offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing. One of the biggest factors inhibiting the state’s ability to expand nursing education is the lack of faculty.

At TWU alone, nearly 63% of entering first-year students who meet course and state GPA requirements are rejected for admission into the undergraduate nursing program because of space constraints.

Fortunately for Glenn, a bit of serendipity came into play. The university began constructing a new health sciences center in 2023 that is allowing the university to expand several health-related programs when it opens in fall 2025.

Among those expanded programs will be nursing, which will allow TWU for the first time to offer a bachelor’s in nursing (BSN) degree on its Denton campus. Prior to this fall, students who had been admitted into TWU’s BSN program had to complete their degrees at the university’s Dallas or Houston campuses.

Glenn was among the new cohort of 62 students chosen to be in the inaugural BSN class at the Denton campus. But she knew others with good grades and similar aspirations of getting into BSN programs elsewhere that weren’t so lucky.

"There are so many other great students, so it’s very competitive,” Glenn said.

A bill under consideration in the Texas Legislature – and demonstrating promising support thus far – aims to create a funding mechanism that incentivizes regional universities to produce more healthcare faculty and graduates in the health professions and add classroom capacity.

House Bill 5265 would create a “healthcare workforce” endowment that would distribute funds to comprehensive regional universities (CRU) based on their output of graduates in health-related fields.

The aim would be to incentivize CRUs to expand or launch undergraduate and graduate health programs that would not only produce more health professionals, but would also produce those who ultimately would go on to teach future health professionals.

The state has 27 CRUs, which are focused on workforce development, and serve virtually every urban and rural pocket of Texas. Not only do supporters of the bill say that creating higher graduate output at CRUs would help ensure healthcare professionals and faculty would help cover needs across the state, statistics show that healthcare students who are trained in or near rural areas are more likely to stay and practice in those communities.

“The bottom line is that if we are going to address our healthcare workforce needs, we have to address the pinch in the supply line,” said TWU Chancellor Carine Feyten in testimony before the House Higher Education Committee in April. “That pinch in the supply line is a lack of faculty.”

The proposed legislation was prompted by the state’s growing dearth of health care professionals to serve its rapidly growing population.

According to data from the Texas State Demographer’s office, in the nursing profession alone, the state needs to produce more than 3,200 new nurses per year above what it currently produces to meet demand. Additionally, the state needs to produce double the current amount of 225 doctoral nurses it currently produces per year to satisfy nursing faculty rolls.

The bill gained House approval in early May and is awaiting consideration by the Senate.