SF 3 - LOAN FORGIVENESS EXPANSION

• WORKFORCE COMMISSION FINDINGS: • Rural areas in Minnesota face a variety of challenges to attract and retain health professionals in many occupations . • WORKFORCE COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS: • The legislature should support continuation, and growth where warranted, of proven programs with measurable outcomes like loan forgiveness.

Mental Health Workforce Plan for Minnesota

Report to the Minnesota Legislature January 2015  Demand for mental health providers will be exacerbated by combined challenges of:      an aging mental health workforce ongoing discrimination associated with mental illnesses, low wages, increasing regulations costs of education and training 

Recommendation 19

:  Add mental health professionals to the Minnesota Health Professionals Loan Forgiveness program and increase funding

Mental Health HPSA requires a psychiatrist to population ratio of 35,000 to 1

Low Income Dental HPSA requires a dentist to population ratio of 4,000 to 1

Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Area requires a physician to population ratio of 3,500 to 1

Bringing Health Care to the Heartland: An Evaluation of Minnesota’s Loan Forgiveness Program

“An effective program that meets its goals of recruiting providers to underserved areas, and that is an influential factor in recipients’ decision of where to practice after graduation .”

• 88% of physicians and 93% of physician assistants and nurse practitioners are still in the same or a similar location; most remain in rural areas after 15 and 20 years.

• Loan forgiveness participants report that the program has a major effect on their choice of practice location.

What the bill does

• Increases funding and the number of loan forgiveness participants to rural and underserved areas.

• Adds rural mental health professionals, public health nurses and dental therapists to the loan forgiveness program • IMPACT • Over 200 new health care providers to rural Minnesota over four years, including 60 primary care physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, 50 registered nurses to nursing homes, and 30 dentists, pharmacists and nursing faculty.

• 60 mental health professionals, public health nurses and dental therapists, all for rural areas.

Minnesota Loan Forgiveness Program

Profession Average Student Debt Annual Award Amount 4-Year Award Amount Physician Dentists Pharmacist “Midlevel” Practitioners Nurses/Public Health Nurses* Nurse/Allied Health Faculty Dental Therapists* Mental Health Professionals (Blended)* $169,900 $206,100 $133,700 $82,900 $34,000 $61,000 $69,000 $64,000 $25,000 $30,000 $20,000 $12,000 $5,000 $9,000 $10,000 $10,000 $100,000 $120,000 $80,000 $48,000 $20,000 $36,000 $40,000 $40,000 * Proposed additions in SF 3 – public health nurses, dental therapists, mental health professionals

Loan forgiveness plan a good idea

By

Daily Editorial Board

January 21, 2015 A cohort of state Senate leaders has proposed legislation this session that would forgive student loans for health care professionals who promise to work for at least three years in a rural community.

When it comes to allocating the state’s tax dollars, greater Minnesota is often overlooked, especially when it comes to health care and education. On occasion, health facilities in small towns face uphill battles when trying to court young doctors and other specialists to come work in a rural area.

A recent report from the state’s Office of Rural Health and Primary Care illustrated this problem. It found that one-third of the state’s physicians and nurse practitioners will retire in the next 10 years, alluding to the possibility of a serious shortage of workers in the near future. In addition, the report found that about 11 percent of primary-care providers live in rural communities, but 17 percent of the state’s population lives in those areas.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor senators who are proposing this measure are wise to incentivize young health professionals to work in areas that may be struggling and to encourage these young workers to spread throughout the state rather than stay put in the metro area.

With some medical school students’ loan debt easily skyrocketing over $200 thousand, some sort of reform is needed. The benefits of this legislation for students are well intentioned and have the potential to be highly effective.

We hope lawmakers can agree to support this idea for the benefit of our state and its students.