The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act will provide grants that identify and disseminate evidence-based best practices for reducing and preventing suicide and burnout among health care professionals.

The US Senate has passed the bipartisan Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act (H.R. 1667).

The bill previously was passed by the US House of Representatives, and now goes to President Biden to be signed into law.

Once signed, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act will provide grants that improve health care professionals’ well-being and job satisfaction and identify and disseminate evidence-based best practices for reducing and preventing suicide and burnout among health care professionals. It will establish a national evidence-based education and awareness campaign targeting health care professionals that encourages us to seek support and treatment for mental and behavioral health concerns. Moreover, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act will provide grants for employee education, peer-support programming, and mental and behavioral health treatment, especially in current or former COVID-19 hotspots. The Act also calls for a comprehensive study on health care professional mental and behavioral health and burnout, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill is named for Lorna Breen, MD, an emergency room physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan and the director of the emergency room at the Allen Hospital in New York City, who died by suicide on April 26, 2020.

Dr. Breen treated COVID-19 patients, contracted the virus, and returned to an overwhelming number of sick patients. She worked around the clock with limited personal protective equipment. Dr. Breen was struggling with feelings of anxiety and depression but felt afraid to ask for help as she thought it would be seen as a sign of weakness and/or be held against her.

Her family also set up the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation Foundation to provide mental health support to health care professionals via grants that reduce and prevent suicide and burnout and fund mental and behavioral health treatment.