Sec. 5102. State health care workforce development grants. Competitive grants are created for the purpose of enabling State partnerships to complete comprehensive planning and to carry out activities leading to coherent and comprehensive health care workforce development strategies at the State and local levels. Grants will support innovative approaches to increase the number of skilled health care workers such as health care career pathways for young people and adults.
Sec. 5201. Federally supported student loan funds. Eases current criteria for schools and students to qualify for loans, shorten payback periods, and decreases the non-compliance provision to make the primary care student loan program more attractive to medical students.
Sec. 5301. Training in family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, and physician assistantship. Provides grants to develop and operate training programs, provide financial assistance to trainees and faculty, enhance faculty development in primary care and physician assistant programs, and to establish, maintain, and improve academic units in primary care. Priority is given to programs that educate students in team-based approaches to care, including the patient-centered medical home.
Sec. 5508. Increasing teaching capacity. Directs the Secretary to establish a grant program to support new or expanded primary care residency programs at teaching health centers and authorizes $25 million for FY2010, $50 million for FY2011 and FY2012 and such sums as may be necessary for each fiscal year thereafter to carry out such program. Also provides $230 million in funding under the Public Health Service Act to cover the indirect and direct expenses of qualifying teaching health centers related to training primary care residents in certain expanded or new programs.
Sec. 5402. Health professions training for diversity. Provides scholarships for disadvantaged students who commit to work in medically underserved areas as primary care providers, and expands loan repayments for individuals who will serve as faculty in eligible institutions. Funding is increased from $37 to $51 million for 2009 through 2013.
Sec. 5501. Expanding access to primary care services and general surgery services. Beginning in 2011, provides primary care practitioners, as well as general surgeons practicing in health professional shortage areas, with a 10 percent Medicare payment bonus for five years. Section 10501 removes the budget-neutrality adjustment that would have offset half of the cost of the primary care and general surgery bonuses.
Sec. 5503. Distribution of additional residency positions. Beginning July 1, 2011, directs the Secretary to redistribute residency positions that have been unfilled for the prior three cost reports and directs those slots for training of primary care physicians. In distributing the residency slots under this section, special preference will be given to programs located in States with a low physician resident to general population ratio and to programs located in States with the highest ratio of population living in a health professional shortage area (HPSA) relative to the general population.
Sec. 5508. Increasing teaching capacity. Directs the Secretary to establish a grant program to support new or expanded primary care residency programs at teaching health centers and authorizes $25 million for FY2010, $50 million for FY2011 and FY2012 and such sums as may be necessary for each fiscal year thereafter to carry out such program. Also provides $230 million in funding under the Public Health Service Act to cover the indirect and direct expenses of qualifying teaching health centers related to training primary care residents in certain expanded or new programs.
