Health Center Professional Programs and Primary Care Workforce

Current policy promotes health center professional training and pipeline programs as solutions to bolster primary care workforce in shortage areas, despite the paucity of evidence.

We analyzed data from US health centers we surveyed from March to June 2010, merged with federal health center data, to estimate associations between health center training and pipeline programs and provider recruitment and retention.

Of the 976 surveyed, 391 health centers responded. Health centers with career ladder programs compared to those without had higher adjusted rates of no/minimal difficulty in recruitment of primary care providers. (17.6% vs. 10.6%; p=.01) and close to double the adjusted rates of reporting no/minimal difficulty in retention of primary care providers (39.4% vs. 21.2%; p=.0001).

There remains a need for further evaluation of health professional programs in order to expand models, such as career ladder programs, that demonstrate effectiveness in improving the primary care workforce in shortage areas.