1) The NYS budget had been approved but unfortunately it was too late, and we had to cancel our original in-person Lobby Day. We did have a virtual Lobby Day, and we met with representatives from Senator Stavisky, Assemblymembers Magnarelli and Hyndman. We were informed by legal counsel that Assemblymember Magnarelli had lost his primary reelection bid and will not be running for office in District 129 in the Syracuse area. Assemblymember Magnarelli has been a strong supporter of our bill since we started this initiative back in 2019. He will be sorely missed, and I certainly thank him for his service to the state.
2) We presently have 7 co-sponsors for the bill, and those that are Democrats, since the Assembly majority are from the Democratic Party, may be interested in sponsoring it. We need to wait until after the elections to see exactly who will be assigned to the various state committees before pursuing a sponsor for the bill.
3) On Wednesday, June 10th, we had a follow-up Ad Hoc Team meeting with Kate Herlihy and Benjamin Eddy from Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP, our legal representatives, to discuss future plans. Ms. Herlihy had mentioned at the meeting that she was interested in separating the two issues surrounding our bill, they include the BS in RT and requiring RRT to practice in New York State. Although we have reservations about moving in this direction it may be the best option that we have. Ms. Herilhy presented this position at our July 10th board meeting. A vote was taken by the board, and it was agreed that the Ad Hoc Team should begin to move in this direction to develop two bills: 1) Continue to move forward with the present bill of the BS in RT and have it reintroduced into the next legislation session and 2) develop a second bill requiring new graduates to complete their RRT credential to maintain their NYS licensing.
4) To clarify, the BS in RT bill is to support the increase in the academic standard to obtaining a license to practice in NYS. The advancement in educational requirement for licensure to a bachelor’s degree is necessary to ensure that future respiratory therapists are adequately academically prepared for this expanding role. This higher academic requirement will ensure Respiratory Therapists are able to appropriately manage patients with complex cardiac and pulmonary disorders and continue to play an active role in improving patient outcomes.
5) There was concern by one of the representatives from a legislator’s office where the issue of diversity was raised. When reviewing the US Healthcare Workforce Statistics for 2025 we found incredible similarities among other healthcare professionals and the profession of Respiratory Therapy. For example: there are 125,291 RTs in the US, 34.4% are male and 65.6% are female. When we looked at RNs there are 3,282,010 in the US in 2024. From the period 2020-2024 there has been an increase in the percentage of nursing of 9.4%. We found that we are more diverse when comparing males to females who practice RT. But females are still most of the RT practitioners. In nursing it’s predominantly a female profession. Only 12.1% males practice nursing while 87.9% of the nurses are female. When you look at the diversity of the various healthcare professions, they are very similar to RTs and yet require a greater educational standard. When we looked at the racial breakdown, we compared RTs to RNs and PAs. We found that the racial breakdowns were similar for these three professions. It’s important to mention that the minimum education requirement for RTs is an associate degree, for nursing, in NYS, is a BS in RN and for PAs it’s a master’s degree. Below is a chart explaining the racial breakdown of the three professions.
| Racial Breakdown | Respiratory Therapist Percentage | Nursing Percentage | Physician Assistants Percentage |
| Hispanic | 11.3% | 9.4% | 9.7% |
| White | 64.2% | 64.4% | 71.1% |
| Black | 13.1% | 13.6% | 6.0% |
| Asian | 7.1% | 8.7% | 8.8% |
| Non-Hispanic | 3.7% | 3.9% | 4.2% |
State of the U.S. Health Care Workforce, 2025
December 2025
High-quality health care starts with a well-trained, adequately supplied, and well-distributed health care workforce. This brief provides detailed data on the occupations within three major health care disciplines in the U.S. health care workforce: medicine, nursing, and oral health. For these critical occupations, this brief presents the most recent data on adequacy, distribution, and the educational pipelines of future health care providers within these disciplines. It also provides summary data for additional health care disciplines, including behavioral health, allied health, and health support occupations.
