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Health workforce strategies for California : a review of the evidence
- Author(s):
- Rittenhouse, Diane, author
- Ament, Alexandra, author
- Genevro, Janice, author
- Contreary, Kara, author
- California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body
- Title(s):
- Health workforce strategies for California : a review of the evidence / authors: Diane Rittenhouse, Alexandra Ament, Janice Genevro, and Kara Contreary.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Publisher:
- [Oakland, CA] : California Health Care Foundation, April 2021.
- Description:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (25 pages)) : illustrations
-
Language:
- English
- Electronic Links:
- https://www.chcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/HealthWorkforceStrategiesReviewEvidence.pdf
http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918366388006676
- Summary:
- California is facing a health workforce crisis. There are not enough health workers to meet the needs of its increasingly diverse, growing, and aging population, and the situation is worsening. Shortages exist across professions and geographies, with sizeable urban and rural underserved populations. Additionally, although the state population is becoming increasingly diverse, the current health workforce doesn’t reflect these demographic shifts. For example, in 2019, 39% of Californians identified as Latinx, but only 14% of medical school matriculants and 6% of active patient care physicians in California were Latinx. Over the past two decades, studies have shown the importance of racial and social concordance between physicians and their patients as well as the need for intercultural competencies, which lead to increased trust and greater patient satisfaction. Particularly important, however, is the ability to speak the same language, which not only increases trust and patient satisfaction but simultaneously decreases poor clinical outcomes because of miscommunication. In addition to private sector investments in health workforce development, many federal and state health workforce policy interventions focus on increasing the number of health professionals and diversifying the health workforce. Interventions exist at different phases of the professional and educational journey, beginning with students in their precollege years and extending through health professional school and beyond. Although California has enacted many of these health workforce policies in an attempt to increase both the size and the diversity of the workforce, current public and private sector efforts have not been sufficient to alleviate the crisis. Without knowing how state programs impact California’s health workforce, it is difficult to make objective, evidenced-based decisions about how to invest public resources to support these interventions. This summary of the evidence looks at these policy interventions with the goal of supporting California’s policymakers and thought leaders as they endeavor to prioritize workforce investments to realize the greatest impact. The goal of this report is to review the evidence about the impact of key health workforce policy interventions (pipeline programs, scholarship programs, loan repayment programs, funding of graduate-level health profession training programs, residency funding) on the following: (1) Increasing the availability of primary care, behavioral health, and dental providers in medically underserved areas (“access”) (2) Increasing the diversity of primary care, behavioral health, and dental providers to better reflect California’s population, particularly Latinx Californians (“diversity”) (3) Improving health care access for patients with limited English proficiency by increasing the number of primary care, behavioral health, and dental providers able to provide services in a language other than English (“language concordance”).
- MeSH:
- California
Health Personnel*
Health Workforce*
United States
- Publication Type(s):
- Technical Report
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references.
35 ref.
- Copyright Status:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license.
- NLM ID:
- 9918366388006676 [Electronic Resource]