Physician Loan Repayment Program
Deadline - March 20, 2009
Colorado is facing a serious shortage of primary care physicians in many rural and urban communities. It is difficult to recruit new physicians to these areas because of the relatively low salaries offered.
Working with the Colorado Rural Health Center and the Colorado Community Health Network, the Foundation is looking to reverse this trend by providing an incentive to offset these drawbacks – a Physician Loan Repayment Program. This loan repayment program awards physicians up to $150,000 to help repay school loans — provided they agree to practice in rural or urban underserved clinics that serve an uninsured or underinsured population.
Physician Loan Repayment Program At-a-Glance
| Purpose: |
Increase physician workforce |
| Grant total: |
$6 million |
| Number of contracts awarded: |
A minimum of 12 per year |
| Eligibility requirement: |
Agrees to practice in medically underserved areas of Colorado |
| How money is dispensed: |
Up to $50,000 per physician per year for 3 Years |
The 2008 Program recently granted more than $2 million to 18 physicians who will work in federally qualified health centers, rural health centers or ClinicNet facilities in rural or underserved urban communities across Colorado. The awards will help defray the physicians' educational loans during the three-year period in which they work in the underserved clinics.
Currently, there are more than 85 unfilled positions in freestanding clinics, and 96 openings are projected through 2010. The increased demand for physicians has been fueled by a growing number of people to rely on safety net clinics for their health care. Patients seen at Colorado’s FQHCs have increased by more than 40 percent since 2001. Increased demand is also fueled by an aging “baby-boomer” generation, the changing work expectations of physicians, and a shortage of training slots for potential physicians.
By populating rural and underserved areas with more physicians, we believe that access to health care will improve throughout Colorado.
Program Details
For more information about this program, please contact:
Rural/Clinic-Net: Cherith Chapman, Colorado Rural Health Center
(303) 996-9698 or cc@coruralhealth.org
OR
FQHC: Tanah Wagenseller, Colorado Community Health Network
303-861-5165, 241 or tanah@cchn.org