HealthForce Minnesota is pleased to be the Governor’s Workforce Development Council choice to administer a new, collaborative HRSA (Health Resources & Services Administration) Primary Care Workforce Planning Grant. During the first quarter of 2011, project leaders listened to healthcare professionals, educators, and administrators throughout Minnesota to determine how to increase Minnesota’s primary care workforce. This input is now being analyzed to guide the development of Minnesota’s Primary Care Workforce Plan.

To gather the best strategic actions for the plan, we invite you to submit ideas that will help Minnesota increase its primary care workforce. We hope the federal government will release funds to support activities included in the plan. Whether or not that occurs, our visionary thinking, strategy development, and direction for Minnesota’s primary care workforce will remain a guiding resource for the coming decade. To this end, we ask that you submit ideas in the spirit of furthering work that is beneficial. These ideas will be included in the planning process and placed on the website as we continue to be transparent and inclusive. We hope that additional sources of funding will be created for these ideas.

We are looking for measurable and replicable ideas that will help with the overall goal of increasing the primary care workforce by 10-25% in the next 10 years. This includes ideas that:

• increase K-16 student interest in and readiness for healthcare sciences and professions,
• expand capacity of primary care education training programs,
• better gather, track, understand or analyze healthcare workforce data,
• improve the effectiveness of the current primary care workforce,
• focus on retention of primary care workers nearing retirement to prolong vital working years, and
• identify problems, barriers, and solutions for our primary care workforce.

View the Idea Submission Form and sample online. Submissions are due Wednesday, May 11th.

If official implementation grant funding becomes available, the Steering Committee will review and select ideas to be included in the implementation grant application. Check this page for updates.

Patti Cullen, CAE
952.851.2487
pcullen@careproviders.org