Panel offers recommendations to ease state’s doctor shortage

Leading California CEOs, educators, nurses and physicians announced Monday an ambitious set of 10 recommendations that they say will eliminate the shortage of primary care physicians and nearly eliminate shortages in psychiatry by 2030.

These recommendations, if implemented, will increase the number of health care workers by over 47,000 people and improve diversity by producing approximately 30,000 workers from rural and underserved communities, said Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California and co-chair of the California Future Health Workforce Commission.

“The commission recognizes that bolstering California’s health care workforce is a significant undertaking,” Napolitano said. “Health care represents almost 12.6 percent of the state’s economy, employing 1.4 million skilled workers across dozens of different highly technical and closely regulated fields.”

She and her fellow cochair, CommonSpirit Health CEO LLoyd Dean, emphasized that the commission had spent more than a year researching, listening to and working with top medical industry experts and stakeholders as they developed the recommendations. They said their work is not over. Rather, they will now begin implementation by working with political leaders and regional educators, nonprofits and medical professionals.

The commission’s recommendations are:

• Expand and improve the transitional programs, also known as pipeline pro- grams, that help students get from high school to a baccalaureate degree and then into medical school.

• Find college students from rural and other under-served communities who have the acumen to become physicians. These students will need mentoring as they overcome obstacles such as poverty, cultural barriers and a lack of role models who have achieved a graduate degree.

• Ensure sufficient funding or scholarship programs to help qualified students pursuing priority health professions.

• Sustain and expand a UC program that seeks out socially conscious graduates who want to practice medicine in underserved communities.

• Make it a goal to increase by 2030 the number of primary care physicians by 1,872 individuals and psychiatrists by 2,202. This would mean maximizing the role of nurse practitioners and psychiatric nurse practitioners.

• Provide scholarships to students willing to practice at community health centers in rural areas and other underresourced communities. The commission predicted that, when this partnership with 10 California medical schools and community health centers is fully implemented in 2026, California would see an increase of 200 to 480 medical students annually.

• Increase the number of nurse practitioners in care teams to help fill gaps in primary care.

• Grow the number of home universal home care workers who can help with preventive care needed by the state’s aging population, thereby reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations by more than $2.7 billion over 10 years due to enhanced training and care.

• Develop a psychiatric nurse practitioner program that recruits from and trains providers to serve in underserved rural and urban communities, expanding treatment to hundreds of thousands of individuals who need it.

• Train and certify a new legion of community health workers and providers who can help with the social support of the elderly and largely home-bound population of the state. These individuals can also help with self-sufficiency for people with mental illness and substance-use disorders.