The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act: what it means for your organization
Background
Dr. Lorna Breen was the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in New York City. On April 26, 2020 — at the height of the first COVID surge in New York — she died by suicide. She had been treating COVID-19 patients in overwhelming numbers and had sought mental health treatment herself, which she feared could threaten her medical license. She was 49.
Her family founded the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation to carry on her legacy through systemic change. Their advocacy, combined with broad bipartisan congressional support, resulted in the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, which was signed into law and has since been reauthorized through 2030. It is the first federal legislation specifically dedicated to the mental health and well-being of healthcare workers.
Sources
- Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation
- Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act (Public Law 117-105)
What the Act does
The Act authorizes federal grants for evidence-based programs to improve the mental health, resiliency, and well-being of healthcare workers. Funded programs include peer support initiatives, mental health screenings, staff debriefing infrastructure, and training for health professions students on recognizing and addressing burnout in themselves and their colleagues.
The Act also funds public education campaigns designed to encourage healthcare workers to seek mental health care without fear — directly addressing the stigma that has historically prevented clinicians from using the resources available to them. Some grantees funded under the Act have reported 37% reductions in measured burnout and 50% decreases in clinically significant mental health conditions among program participants.
Sources
- Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation
- HRSA Health Workforce
- Congressional Research Service
The ALL IN campaign
Alongside the federal legislation, the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation launched the ALL IN: Wellbeing First for Healthcare campaign — a national initiative focused on removing the structural barriers that prevent healthcare workers from seeking mental health care. The campaign has produced concrete, measurable change.
As of 2025, 70 licensure boards across medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and dental have removed intrusive mental health questions from their licensing applications. More than 1,194 hospitals have removed intrusive mental health questions from credentialing applications. And more than 3 million health workers now have stigma-free access to mental health care as a result of these reforms — a number that continues to grow as the campaign expands to additional state boards and healthcare organizations.
Sources
- Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, ALL IN Campaign metrics, 2025
Licensing and credentialing reform
Forty percent of physicians report reluctance to seek mental health care specifically because of concerns about licensure — the fear that disclosure of mental health treatment could jeopardize their license to practice. This chilling effect has been documented in survey after survey, and it operates as a structural barrier independent of any individual's attitude toward mental health care. Physicians die by suicide at twice the rate of the general population; the reluctance to seek care is not a cause without consequence.
Virginia was the first state to enact a law requiring licensing boards to remove mental health questions from applications, and 21 or more states have since taken similar action. The Americans with Disabilities Act provides a framework for this reform: boards may ask about current functional impairment, but not about past mental health history or treatment. As states continue to act, the legal landscape for stigma-free licensure is improving — but implementation requires healthcare organizations to audit their own credentialing processes and communicate clearly to staff that seeking care will not cost them their privileges.
Sources
- Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation
- Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report
- Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II
- Virginia Code § 54.1-2929.1
What this means for your organization
The structural reforms enabled by the Breen Act and the ALL IN campaign create real opportunity — but only if healthcare organizations build internal well-being infrastructure that allows staff to actually use the access they now have. Removing an intrusive licensing question is necessary but not sufficient: staff also need to believe that seeking help within their organization is safe, and they need access to well-being monitoring that surfaces distress before it reaches crisis.
Immediate steps for healthcare organizations include auditing your own credentialing applications for intrusive mental health questions, joining the ALL IN campaign, and communicating proactively to staff about the changes that have been made. The longer-term work — building the peer support, well-being monitoring, and organizational culture that make help-seeking feel genuinely safe — is where ImprovementFlow's well-being program infrastructure supports the goals that the Breen Act has established at the federal level.
Sources
- Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, 'ALL IN: Hospital Certification'
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