Massachusetts will use a combination of funding from the federal government and opioid lawsuit settlements to help repay more than $140 million of student loan debt for healthcare workers. Some of that cash will flow directly to long-term care staff.
The first round of awards in the MA Repay program will range between $12,500 and $300,000 per person for approximately 3,000 primary care and behavioral health providers who commit to working in community health centers, acute-care hospitals and other eligible providers for four or five years, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
An upcoming round of awards will target skilled nursing providers and other home- and human services providers. Tara Gregorio, president of Massachusetts Senior Care, told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News on Monday, that relief from student loans along with providing tuition-free classes at community colleges could help stabilize the long-term care community’s workforce.
“The workforce crisis is the single biggest issue directly leading to the current instability throughout the health care system,” Gregorio said.
Award amounts will depend on an individual’s work setting and how many hours they work in addition to the qualification. Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll (D) said every eligible applicant will receive some kind of funding, which she said could help people “overcome barriers and put down roots in areas with some of the most potent staffing shortages,” according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
For the first round of awards, nearly half of the recipients are people of color, 70% are women and 47% are younger than 35, the paper reported.
Gregorio said Mass Senior Care continues to work with state officials on an “all-of-the-above” strategy to address the workforce crisis. That includes stipends for paid time off for people to attend nursing school; grants to help frontline workers with food, housing, childcare and transportation costs; creating a certified medication aide position; and allowing the state to join the nurse licensing compact to make it easier to hire nurses from other states.
