The L.A. Care Board of Governors has committed up to $31 million to an initiative that will help recruit primary care physicians into Los Angeles County to serve the uninsured, Medi-Cal patients and other vulnerable populations. It’s called Elevating the Safety Net, and is initially comprised of three programs. The initiative is critical as a UC San Francisco study shows the state will face a shortage of nearly 9,000 primary care physicians by 2030.
Certain parts of L.A. County are already hurting. Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital reports a shortage of 500 primary care physicians right now.
The first program of Elevating the Safety Net will provide grants of up to $125,000 to safety net clinics and practices for salary subsidies, sign-on bonuses and/or relocation costs. The grants will allow them to compete with private entities that are offering higher salaries to new recruits.
The second program will provide medical school loan repayments for those recruits. Many physicians leave medical school with loan debt the size of a mortgage payment, making it difficult for them to turn down positions in more lucrative practices.
The third program will help build a pipeline for the future by providing full medical school scholarships of up to $350,000 each. On July 19, the first eight recipients of the L.A. Care Elevating the Safety Net Scholarship program were announced.