Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Workforce Healthcare topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Legislature to consider continued $10M-per-year nursing expansion funding for NSHE; committee adds targeted campus allocations
Summary
Senate Bill 498 would provide $10 million per year to NSHE to expand undergraduate and graduate nursing programs; committee discussion added targeted one‑time appropriations for Nevada State University (North Las Vegas) and Western Nevada College deferred maintenance and moved the bill as amended.
Patricia Charlton, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, presented Senate Bill 498 on May 28 seeking $10 million in each fiscal year of the 2025–27 biennium to continue expansion of nursing programs across NSHE. Charlton and nursing program representatives told the committee funding from the 2023 Legislature (SB375) allowed institutions to hire faculty, expand simulation capacity and increase cohort sizes, but that two‑year funding windows are not always sufficient to make programs self‑sustaining.
Doctor Molly Coking, associate dean at the Orvis School of Nursing (University of Nevada, Reno), told the committee Nevada ranks in the bottom five states nationally for nurses per capita and that to reach the U.S. average Nevada needs more than 4,000 additional RNs. She described investments the prior funding enabled — an approximate 30% faculty increase, year‑round program offerings, simulation facilities and new cohorts — and said sustained funding would maintain growth and allow launching an accelerated BS option.
Other institutions described concrete seat increases attributed to the prior round of funding. Nevada State University said continued investment would allow it to graduate an additional 264 nurses over the next biennium. The committee discussed faculty recruitment and clinical student‑to‑instructor ratios; Assemblymember Hategui noted a prior session removed a statutory cap that allows larger clinical cohorts and asked campuses to report whether they planned to use that flexibility.
At work session the committee voted to amend SB498 by adding general fund appropriations of $2.5 million for Nevada State University North Las Vegas academic programming and $1,511,999 for Western Nevada College deferred maintenance at the Aspen Building, and then moved the bill as amended (amend and do pass). Supporters included faculty, hospitals and nursing associations; no opposition was recorded in committee.
