Physician Loan Repayment Program
Colorado is facing a serious shortage of primary care physicians in many rural and urban underserved communities. It is difficult to recruit and retain new physicians to these areas for a variety of reasons, including professional isolation, a lack of amenities, higher rates of poverty and the hardships of providing rural and underserved care.
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: |
$5.4 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 |
Since 2008, the program granted more than $5.4 million to 47 physicians who agreed to practice in Federally Qualified Health Centers, Rural Health Centers or safety-net facilities in rural or underserved urban communities across Colorado. The awards help defray the physicians' educational loans during the three-year period in which they work in the underserved clinics.
As of April 14, 2010, Colorado clinics needed 181 full-time primary care physicians to meet the needs of underserved areas, according to the Primary Care Office of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The increase in demand for physicians is fueled by an aging baby boomer generation, the changing work expectations and practices of physicians, a shortage of training slots for potential physicians, and a growing number of individuals relying on safety-net clinics for their health care. Patients seen at Colorado’s FQHCs have increased by more than 55 percent since 1998.
By populating rural and underserved areas with more primary care physicians, we believe that access to health care will improve throughout Colorado.
Program Details
For more information about this program, please contact:
Rural Health Clinic/Clinic-Net Loan Repayment: Cherith Flowerday, Colorado Rural Health Center (303) 996-9698 or cfl@coruralhealth.org
OR
Community Health Center/FQHC: Tanah Wagenseller, Colorado Community Health Network (303) 861-5165, 241 or tanah@cchn.org