Education and the health professions: explaining policy choices among the states

Outcomes of States’ Scholarship, Loan Repayment, and Related Programs for Physicians

CONTEXT

Many states attempt to entice young generalist physicians into rural and medically underserved areas with financial support-for-service programs-scholarships, service-option loans, loan repayment, direct financial incentives, and resident support programs-with little documentation of their effectiveness.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to assess outcomes of states' support-for-service programs as a group and to compare outcomes of the 5 program types.

DESIGN

We conducted a cross-sectional, primarily descriptive study.

PARTICIPANTS

We studied all 69 state programs operating in 1996 that provided financial support to medical students, residents, and practicing physicians in exchange for a period of service in underserved areas; federally funded initiatives were excluded. We also surveyed 434 generalist physicians who served in 29 of these state programs and a matched comparison group of 723 nonobligated young generalist physicians.

DATA COLLECTION

Information on eligible programs was collected by telephone, mail questionnaires, and from secondary sources. Obligated and nonobligated physicians were surveyed, with 80.3% and 72.8% response rates, respectively.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Levels of socioeconomic need of communities and patients served by physicians, programs' participant service completion and retention rates, and physicians' satisfaction levels.

RESULTS

Compared with young nonobligated generalists, physicians serving obligations to state programs practiced in demonstrably needier areas and cared for more patients insured under Medicaid and uninsured (48.5% vs. 28.5%, P <0.001). Service completion rates were uniformly high for loan repayment, direct incentive, and resident-support programs (93% combined) but lower for student-targeting service-option loan (mean, 44.7%) and scholarship (mean, 66.5%) programs. State-obligated physicians were more satisfied than nonobligated physicians, and 9 of 10 indicated that they would enroll in their programs again. Obligated physicians also remained longer in their practices than nonobligated physicians (P = 0.03), with respective group retention rates of 71% versus 61% at 4 years and 55% versus 52% at 8 years. Retention rates were highest for loan repayment, direct incentive, and loan programs.

CONCLUSIONS

States' support-for-service programs bring physicians to needy communities where a strong majority work happily and with at-risk patient populations; half stay over 8 years. Loan repayment and direct financial incentive programs demonstrate the broadest successes.

"No fear" curricular change: monitoring curricular change in the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's National Initiative on Community Partnerships and Health Professions Education

PURPOSE

To assess the effect of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's five-year (9/91 to 9/96) primary care curricular change initiative involving seven sites and 27 schools with respect to courses offered, graduates' specialty choices, and valued school features (e.g., reputation, research, productivity, school climate) and to track how well the schools possessed or developed the processes associated with enduring curricular change.

METHOD

Information was collected via pre- and post-surveys of faculty and students, site visits, annual reports, and medical students' specialty match results.

RESULTS

In general, the schools either possessed or developed the institutional, curricular design, and curriculum features associated with successful curricular change. Further, the initiative had a positive or neutral impact on most of the valued features: 199 courses were revised or developed, including 138 offered in the community, involving 141 interdisciplinary faculty. Comparing 1991-1997 data, the average percentage increases in students' selecting primary care from the involved schools were greater than the national percentages. In 1997, a larger percentage of project school graduates selected primary care than the national average.

CONCLUSION

Medical schools can make major curricular changes and achieve intended outcomes (e.g., new and/ or revised courses, multidisciplinary instruction, instruction in the community, and changes in specialty choice), and this can occur without negatively impacting other valued school aspects.

When (not if) evaluation flexibility is desirable. Examples from the CPHPE initiative

The evaluation literature often debates whether evaluators should be flexible in evaluation design and activities in order to collaborate with program directors and be responsive to programming needs. Two conditions are specified under which evaluation flexibility is not only desirable but essential. Two examples from the cluster evaluation of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's Community Partnerships for Health Professions Education initiative are provided to illustrate why flexibility under these conditions proved to be essential. One of the examples, related to the "community" involvement in the initiative, illustrates the need for flexibility as programs experience goals clarification. The other example, related to the coincidental national health care reform efforts, illustrates the need for flexibility both to capture programs' efforts to protect their integrity and to ensure against spurious conclusions as a result of external turbulence in policy environments. How the cluster evaluation team addressed these issues is also described.

Evaluating the impact on public policy of foundation-sponsored programs in the health professions

The leaders of national philanthropic foundations have long been active in informing public policy makers about their organizations' accomplishments and lessons learned in health care and other issues. The public policy context also is seen increasingly as an important factor influencing changes in the health care market. This article outlines how public policy was monitored and evaluated in a recent initiative in health care by a prominent national foundation. The markers of policy change in the evaluation of this initiative represented a mixture of the initiative's efforts to inform policy makers, the success the participant projects had in making policy makers aware of the initiative's goals, and actual changes in policy outcomes.

Sending a policy signal: state legislatures, medical schools, and primary care mandates

In the past few years, eleven states have directed medical schools in their states to produce more primary care practitioners or to change the training of physicians to make careers in primary care more attractive to medical students. This article outlines the progress and politics of the states' desire to hold medical schools accountable for producing more primary care practitioners. It analyzes the coerciveness and scope of the laws, including the provisions for implementation and accountability. Interviews with legislative staff, legislators, and university and medical school lobbyists provide information on the measures' political rationale and expectations. Most striking was the signaling nature of the provisions. The laws were not strident or especially onerous; they contained many loopholes and no real sanctions. They were important, however, in the message they conveyed. In state after state, legislatures sent a message to the medical schools that they were part of the solution to distributional problems of health care delivery and must be responsive to legislative desires for action. State legislators sent a policy signal, and most medical schools apparently understood its significance.

Laboratories and the health care marketplace: the limits of state workforce policy

Nearly every state has enacted its own effort to change both the composition and the practice patterns of America's medical workforce. At the same time, the health care marketplace is altering the nation's medical workforce, encouraging more medical students to enter primary care and fewer to become specialists. In this article, I consider various issues raised by these trends. Do the various state programs constitute an effective policy laboratory? Is the market solving problems government could not? Are the government initiatives now irrelevant? I conclude that the market is solving the problem of specialty maldistribution (too many specialists) but not the problem of geographic maldistribution (too many medically underserved communities). I also conclude that state workforce efforts have not constituted good policy laboratories and that only federal action can seriously address the geographic maldistribution problem.