HealthForce Minnesota is pleased to be the Governor’s Workforce Development Council's choice to administer a new, collaborative HRSA (Health Resources & Services Administration) Primary Care Planning Grant ($149,000). They need and welcome your input to make this a vibrant, creative, and innovative effort for Minnesota’s current and future workforce. Association staff have already met with the grant manager, and gave input during their regional meetings; however, your specific experiences could assist them in determining strategic directions in this area. Of particular interest would be identification of where there is a shortage of physicians working with and/or in our facilities. The grant is aimed at identifying strategies to increase the number of primary care practitioners (physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants) by 10% or more in the next 10 years. It involves:

• Gathering and analyzing data on primary care practitioners
• Gathering regional input regarding current needs for primary care practitioners
• Identifying workforce shortages and career opportunities for primary care professions
• Identifying current educational resources to prepare primary care practitioners
• Identifying strategies to educate, retain, and retrain primary care practitioners
• Preparing a state plan to increase the primary care practitioner workforce by 10% or more

Once the plan is completed, Minnesota will be eligible to apply for $3 million of implementation funding ($1.5 million per year for two years). The implementation grant request will be due July 2011. This is an exciting opportunity to bring this important “seed” money to our state. You can register your input by going to the HealthForce Minnesota website and clicking on the “strategic input questions” button. They are collecting feedback through the end of March.

Patti Cullen, CAE
952.851.2487
pcullen@careproviders.org

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