This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Basketball Hall of Fame’s enshrinement weekend here in Massachusetts. It is evident that our country truly values its athletic stars and treats them as heroes. The real heroes to me, however, are the doctors, nurses, EMTs and others who work ceaselessly day and night to provide quality care to those in their community. If we’re not careful, however, this quality of care will decline due to a reduced number of these heroes, our skilled health professionals, as we seek to expand essential primary care services through reform.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the most critical problems our broken healthcare system currently faces is the primary care physician shortage. If we can’t get a handle on this issue, it won’t matter what type of universal coverage we devise. The problem will continue to escalate, as we now face a dire shortage of cardiologists in the coming years, in addition to the current lack of primary care professionals.

While sometimes a bit more cynical than my fellow bloggers, I may have a small reason to be optimistic. An article posted this past weekend describes how Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary “has awarded $33 million to expand the training of healthcare professionals…[These funds are] part of $500 million allotted to HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration to address workforce shortages under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).” The funds will be distributed through various programs, including “$19.3 million for scholarships for disadvantaged students going into health professions schools and training programs.” This, to me, is a small step in the right direction.

I’m proud that my own Baystate Health System has been investing in scholarship programs like this for years. However, these human capital investments would vanish if a few uninformed senators have their way.

It seems a few senators are trying to find nonexistent skeletons in the closet by yet again attacking healthcare alliances (sometimes called group purchasing organizations, or GPOs), suggesting that these organizations do anything other than help our hospitals and healthcare heroes by reducing costs, creating innovative programs and improving the economic infrastructure of our communities.

Not only did our healthcare alliance provide significant savings through its well-negotiated contracts on medical equipment and supplies ($36 billion to $64 billion in savings to hospitals and the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs each year, in fact), the flow of dollars back to our healthcare system allowed us to invest in and improve our own region. For example, these funds allowed us to create scholarships for inner-city kids to study and train at healthcare vocational schools and also to invest in other activities that built up the health of our community, such as subsidizing mortgages for staff who otherwise wouldn’t be able afford their own homes. This money was critical in providing us the freedom to do meaningful things within the region, toward improving our community’s social and economic health. Without these funds from our GPO, we would scarcely have been able to do any of this.

Let’s attack the real problems in our splintered healthcare system and leave alone healthcare alliances, one of the very few instances of an industry that exists solely to aid our nation’s hospitals in saving money, providing quality care, and assisting the members – and heroes – of our communities.

Mike Daly blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.