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OKLAHOMA CITY – Rural hospital administrators will have one less incentive to attract health care professionals to their communities this year.Physician Manpower Training Commission Executive Director Rick Ernest said the Legislature’s failure to appropriate any money for the state student loan repayment program means the program has died on the vine.
For the past three years, students training to be physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, or other health professionals have been eligible to have anywhere from $12,500 to $25,000 per year repaid with matching funds through the federal government, PMTC, and the rural communities in which they have served.
The program was designed to provide incentives for medical and nursing students to stay in the state, and in turn recipients of the loan repayments must practice in rural Health Manpower Shortage Areas, or HPSAs, which are designated by the federal government as having a critical need for medical professionals.
More than 20 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties are listed as Primary Care HPSAs.
“This was a promising program, and it was a good run,” Ernest said.
He said the grants from the federal government come with Draconian penalties if “onerous guidelines” were not fulfilled, and the absence of any state appropriations means the program is done for now.
Ernest said the commission could put the program back in place on its own if it had the resources because the infrastructure is already in place.
The last two recipients of loan repayment assistance were both physicians who had $50,000 each in total student loans repaid.
Source:
http://www.sfgate.com |
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