Jul. 1—When trying to recruit medical providers to jobs in New Mexico, Jerry Harrison and his team hear two questions above all others.
Does the job offer student loan repayment?
And how often are providers expected to be on call?
“Those are the two things, year after year after year,” Harrison, executive director of New Mexico Health Resources Inc., told a group of state lawmakers Monday during a Legislative Health and Human Services Committee meeting in Taos.
The good news for New Mexico is the state has significantly increased funding for its Health Professional Loan Repayment Program in recent years — in 2022, for instance, $4.6 million went to pay for loans of just 44 applicants, while last year, the program ballooned to $14.6 million to help a record 724 workers, according to information provided by the state Higher Education Department.
But it’s too soon to know whether those investments will make a dent in New Mexico’s longstanding trouble recruiting and retaining medical workers, said RubyAnn Esquibel, a principal analyst for the state’s Legislative Finance Committee. And nationwide data suggests people taking advantage of loan forgiveness programs don’t always stick around, said Harrison, citing a study that includes data from New Mexico.
“One of the big findings that we have come to, and this is New Mexico and national, is that loan repayers start looking for work within six months of the time that they start,” Harrison said, adding retention is a major problem for many employers around the state.
In a presentation Rep. Kristina Ortez called “a bit of bummer,” Harrison said his organization — a nonprofit recruitment agency that is partially state-funded — is aware of about 671 health care provider vacancies in the state. It’s not a comprehensive list, as it includes only jobs with employers that work with his organization, but Harrison said it’s a much higher volume than usual.
“Three years ago, that would have been 200,” Harrison said. “Most of this summer, we’ve been about 700 vacancies.”
New Mexico’s behavioral health care provider shortage is among the nation’s most severe, along with South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Indiana. The behavioral health needs of about 845,000 residents are “underserved,” Esquibel said.
Recruitment and retention also are particularly pronounced in rural areas. Dr. Gary Giblin, a longtime physician at Santa Fe’s La Familia Health and its current interim chief medical officer, told The New Mexican while it’s tough for the organization to recruit, it’s even harder for organizations in Española and Las Vegas, N.M.
Giblin said La Familia’s status as a federally qualified health center where providers can apply for student loan forgiveness is a major selling point.
“Every qualified site [for loan forgiveness] has a score,” Gilpin said. “If you owe a lot, you have to go to a place that has a very high score, you know, places like Hatch, Lordsburg, Raton.”
La Familia, which accepts patients on Medicaid, Medicare and uninsured people, has a “decent score,” Gilpen said, which makes it moderately competitive.
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