Bush Administration re-funds community health centers

Anne Zieger — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:46:25 -0400

At a time when access to primary healthcare is proving increasingly important--especially for hospitals that want to avoid needless emergency department trips--it's probably looking like good news to most providers that the Bush Administration has refunded federal community health centers, rural healthcare service outreach grants and the National Health Services Corps until 2012.

Community health centers care for more than 18 million people at 6,600 sites across the U.S., often in underserved and rural areas, while the National Health Services Corps offers financial assistance to med students who agree to offer primary care in medically underserved areas

Bush signed the Health Care Safety Net Act of 2008, which increases funding for federal community health centers to $3.3 billion by the year 2012, up from $2.1 billion. At the same time, it grows funding for the National Health Services Corps to $185 million during the same five-year period.

To learn more about these programs:
- read this Modern Healthcare article (reg. req.)

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Study: Med schools could dramatically boost rural MD supply

Tue, 20 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Right now, only 9 percent of doctors live in rural areas, while 20 percent of the U.S. population is based there, according to current research. But medical schools could help close this gap. In fact, if each medical school added a rural training program, they would more than double the number of new graduates going into rural practice, according to a study in the journal Academic Medicine. The study estimated that if each of the 125 allopathic medical schools committed 10 seats per class to a rural training program--producing 1,139 new rural doctors a year--that would far exceed the current flow of graduating students to rural areas. This would help ease the burden of care in rural areas, which are not only underserved by volume, but also include many older, sicker residents, researchers said.

To learn more about the study:
- read this AMNews piece

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Bush Administration re-funds community health centers

Study: Med schools could dramatically boost rural MD supply