Just as the federal government is introducing several new programs to promote the recruitment, training, and placement of more primary-care providers, other efforts are being threatened with funding decreases or elimination.
One, the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program, distributed $268 million in pediatric training funds to 55 freestanding children’s teaching hospitals in fiscal-year 2012. The program, however, was zeroed out in President Obama’s initial budget proposal last year, and the president’s fiscal-year 2013 budget proposal recommends slashing the program’s annual funding by two-thirds to $88 million.
—Robert Phillips, MD, MSPH, director, Robert Graham Center, a primary-care research center in Washington, D.C.
Kathleen Klink, MD, director of the Division of Medicine and Dentistry in the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, also points to the Title VII Area Health Education Center program as an example of government-funded assistance. The competitive grant process supports innovation and access to care for vulnerable populations, in part by improving the primary-care workforce’s geographic and ethnic distribution. Some of the grantees introduce high school students to medical careers, while others recruit and train minorities or place providers in underserved communities, effectively targeting both ends of the pipeline.
Robert Phillips, MD, MSPH, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Robert Graham Center, a primary-care research center, has high regard for the Title VII program. But making an impact requires a long-term investment, he cautions. “In the states that do this well, like Arkansas and North Carolina, it pays off,” he says. “But they can’t prove it sufficiently to save their budget.” The federal program received $233 million in fiscal-year 2012. Under the president’s fiscal-year 2013 budget proposal, however, the funding is likewise eliminated.
Other programs have debuted in recent legislation. One program, introduced under the Affordable Care Act, provides $230 million over five years to expand residency training slots within ambulatory primary-care settings. Dr. Klink says the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program, as it is known, has so far supported 22 health centers and 150 enrolled residents. “It’s just the beginning,” she adds.
Another program, the Primary Care Residency Expansion, likewise initiated under the Affordable Care Act, will distribute $167 million to train an estimated 700 primary-care physicians (PCPs), 900 physician assistants, and 600 nurse practitioners and nurse midwives over five years. Glen Stream, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, recently told The Washington Post, “It’s good, but it’s also a drop in the bucket.”
Bryn Nelson is a freelance medical writer in Seattle.