CalOptima Health officials said it will distribute $10 million in grants to OC schools, colleges and universities with nursing, primary care and behavioral health programs to help address a shortage in workers, which can affect care.
CalOptima is Orange County’s public health care provider and its CEO said the funding, which is part of a $50 million Provider Workforce Development Initiative, will better support community health centers and providers and help address health disparities in the local population.
“Investing in our community’s health care workforce will directly impact the ability of our nearly 1 million members to access essential medical and behavioral health care for years to come,” CEO Michael Hunn said in a statement. “The grants for educational institutions will strengthen our ability to address health disparities to better serve our insured members.”
The county, like most communities across the nation, is seeing a shortage of healthcare workers. CalOptima wants to change that, starting with removing barriers to professional health care education, its leaders said.
“We’ve been concerned about provider workforce shortages for a long time, not just CalOptima, industry-wide,” Yunkyung Kim, chief operating officer at CalOptima, said. “We’ve been seeing physicians retire. We’ve seen the nursing shortages. And so it’s not an issue that arose overnight. It’s been something that has been a concern for most health plans in the entire industry for a long time.
“CalOptima has been looking at the role that we play in our community in Orange County and where we can support the sustainability of health care,” she added.
There are a few things that have contributed to this shortage, Kim said, including the aging of current healthcare providers and the affordability of education.
CalOptima Health will review proposals sent in by higher-education institutions by the end of January to determine how the $10 million should be…
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