Helping hand for rural doctors getting bigger

Grants to help repay loans may set state record.

A Colorado program that helps repay the student loans of doctors who work in rural or underserved areas is gearing up for what could be its largest grant class ever.

The Colorado Health Service Corps will begin accepting applications for the new grants on March 1, and Steve Holloway, who oversees the program for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said as much as $5 million could be available to repay loans for as many as 60 physicians and other providers. Already, Holloway said, the corps is the largest such state-based program in the country. The federal government funds a similar National Health Service Corps.

The grants are awarded to doctors and other health care providers who are working in areas with an officially designated shortage of health professionals. In Colorado, those shortages are typically in rural areas, though doctors and others working at urban clinics that serve disadvantaged communities are also eligible to receive grants. Holloway said hospitals and clinics cannot guarantee to doctors that they will receive student loan repayment grants as part of their work but do sometimes use that possibility as a recruitment tool.

Those receiving grants sign a contract promising to remain at their clinic for three years. Holloway said the program looks especially for applicants with attributes — such as specialized training in rural health care — that will likely keep them in the shortage area even longer.

The program has helped repay the loans of more than 400 providers since it began in 2009.

“It’s worked out extremely well for us,” Holloway said.

Funding for the program comes largely through a grant from the Colorado Health Foundation. Holloway said the program also receives state and federal dollars. This month, the program announced that it had distributed $1.9 million in new grants to 33 health care professionals from an application period last year.

“By helping these new health care professionals with their student loans,” Dr. Larry Wolk, CDPHE’s executive director, said in a statement announcing the grants, “we also help bring doctors, nurses and other health care providers to communities that need them.”