Senate committee advances bill to pay and support nurse preceptors to expand clinical placements

Chair Pinkney turned HB385 over to sponsor Senator Huxtable, who said the bill establishes a statewide nurse preceptor grant program to help health care facilities provide the clinical placements nursing students need to graduate and become licensed. The program would support hospitals, long‑term care facilities, public health providers, ambulatory care settings, home health agencies, hospice providers and — by amendment — federally qualified health centers.

Senator Huxtable and her co‑sponsors said the legislation addresses a persistent barrier to growing Delaware’s nursing workforce: a limited number of available preceptors and clinical placements. DHSS requested that administration of the program be handled by a nonprofit because of limited internal capacity; the bill names the Delaware Nurses Workforce Institute as the likely administrator but allows a similar qualified nonprofit to serve that role.

Christopher Otto, executive director of the Delaware Nurses Association and the Delaware Nurses Workforce Institute, described how the program would operate: organizations — both for‑profit and nonprofit — would apply to the nonprofit administrator for funds or technical support, and the program would prioritize organizations that directly incentivize preceptors. "We would look at stipends, funds, grants going to the preceptors directly," Otto said, adding that the program targets organizational capacity to accept more undergraduate and graduate nursing students.

Otto said DHSS estimates up to 140 licensed health care organizations across Delaware could be eligible, subject to available funding, and the bill includes a required annual report detailing how funds were used, how many preceptors and students were served and program outcomes. Sponsor remarks cited an anticipated minimum annual investment of $500,000 drawn from existing rural health transformation funds earmarked for non‑physician workforce training; the governor’s office and DHSS have indicated the program qualifies for that funding source.

Supporters from the nursing and health care communities appeared in favor during public comment. Susan Kennedy Buck, a family nurse practitioner, faculty member at the University of Delaware and representative of the Delaware Coalition of Nurse Practitioners, testified that preceptors are hard to recruit and that clinical placements strongly influence whether students remain in the state after graduation. Kat Caudle of the Delaware Academy of Medicine & Public Health and Carling Ryan of the Delaware Health Care Association also urged release from committee, saying increased preceptor capacity would reduce bottlenecks in nursing education and accelerate entry to the workforce.

The committee asked questions about program enrollment and reporting. Otto confirmed the bill requires an annual reporting mechanism to the General Assembly, the Governor’s Office, DHSS and other entities describing fund use and measures of success. Senator Huxtable offered to accept cosponsors and the measure moved forward for public comment without a recorded roll‑call vote.

The committee is expected to consider releasing HB385 from committee to the full Senate; no formal floor vote was recorded during this hearing.