# Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act

This bill aims to address a significant problem in American healthcare: shortages of doctors, nurses, dentists, and mental health professionals, especially in rural and low-income areas. It does this through three main strategies that work together to get more healthcare providers into communities that need them most.

The first part creates a scholarship program where states can offer full tuition coverage, educational expenses, and living stipends to students pursuing careers in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and mental health. The catch is straightforward: if you receive a scholarship, you must commit to working for at least one year in an underserved area of your state after you finish your training. This is a practical trade-off—the government and your state pay for your education, and you agree to serve patients in places that typically struggle to attract healthcare providers. The bill sets aside $20 million per year for this program, with at least half going specifically to primary care providers like family doctors and internists.

The second part focuses on improving medical education itself. It gives grants to medical schools to strengthen mentorship programs, helping experienced primary care doctors guide the next generation toward careers in underserved communities. Medical schools can use this funding to reward faculty members who mentor students, offer workshops on effective mentoring strategies, and create opportunities for students to work alongside primary care doctors in rural and low-income neighborhoods. This addresses a real problem: many medical students never see successful primary care doctors in action, so they don't consider it as a career path.

The third part funds grants to health professions schools to teach new skills that modern healthcare demands, like managing chronic diseases, integrating mental health with regular medical care, providing culturally competent care, and working as part of a team. The bill also requires a study on whether Medicare and insurance companies are asking doctors to do excessive paperwork for patient visits, which many physicians argue wastes time that could be spent on actual patient care.

Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act

Ruiz, Raul

Building a Health Care Workforce for the Future Act This bill establishes, within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), grant programs for health professional education and training. It also requires the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine) to study the documentation requirements for cognitive services under Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers, including administrative and labor costs of such documentation. For the first grant program, HHS must award matching grants to states for scholarships to ensure an adequate supply of health professionals. As a condition of receiving scholarships, recipients must agree to work in areas with shortages of health care providers for one year for each year they receive the scholarship. For the second grant program, HHS must award grants to medical and other health professions schools to improve curricula for, and education and training on, certain priority competencies, such as patient-centered medical homes and chronic disease management. The Advisory Committee on Training in Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry shall select these competencies annually. For the last grant program, HHS may award grants to medical schools for primary care mentorship programs to support faculty who serve as mentors and encourage interest in primary care among students.