The Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker is an interactive map that allows users to examine and visualize the primary care workforce providing health care to individuals with Medicaid throughout the US. Users can search by state, county, provider type, year, and provider beneficiary volume. This online resource can be used to benchmark states’ Medicaid workforce,…
In times of heightened population health needs, the health workforce must respond quickly and efficiently, especially at the state level. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the needs for greater flexibility in scope of practice and interstate mobility areas of health workforce regulation. The lack of a coordinated national response early in the pandemic left the onus…
Providers’ participation in Medicaid has been an ongoing area of interest for researchers, but there have been limitations to prior studies. For example, studies based on analyzing claims data have often been limited to data from a single state, and the last national-level analysis utilized 2009 Medicaid claims and was limited to 24 states. This article assesses primary care providers’ participation in Medicaid…
The Drug Addiction Treatment Act (DATA) of 2000 created a pathway for clinicians to obtain waivers (“DATA waivers”) to treat patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) outside of an opioid treatment program, provided the clinicians met certification and training requirements. Prior research mainly relies on DATA-waiver status or prescription data alone to estimate the workforce,…
Telehealth use increased steadily in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic but underserved populations were among the least likely to use telehealth compared with affluent, privately insured populations. While recent studies have documented rapid growth in telehealth visits during the pandemic, none have analyzed the impact of telehealth on access to care. This…
Health centers provide primary care to millions of patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) through language service programs. Approximately 25% of 30 million patients who received care at health centers in 2019 had LEP and needed interpreters when clinicians and other staff were not fluent in their language. This article examines interpreter use in health…
The COVID-19 pandemic drove widespread use of telehealth, making the virtual care environment inherently different in 2021 than it had been previously. Due to unique financial constraints facing community health centers (CHCs), the sustainability of telehealth may be highly relevant to the relationship between telehealth utilization and payment parity. This article discusses the association between…
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing structural racism that widened gaps in access to care and health outcomes, disproportionately affecting racial and ethnic minorities. Research has shown that a racially and ethnically diverse workforce can be instrumental in addressing disparities. Lack of diversity in the public health workforce can occur from several factors, including underrepresentation of…
Social mission efforts in health professions education are helping to better prepare graduates with skills to address societal needs. These efforts are designed to strategically increase health equity and address health disparities. This article provides an overview of the social mission research landscape and discusses critical evidence gaps.
Many medical education programs have recognized the need to promote social mission goals to help ensure that students graduate with the skills they need to promote health equity in their communities. However, little research has been done that explores how these institutions make social mission a part of their accreditation standards. This article describes a…
