Increase Provider Availability

Improve Quality of Care across the Lifespan

A key component of high quality health care is ensuring that practitioners are available to provide the care. This is especially challenging for rural areas such as many communities in Vermont.

Recognizing this challenge, Vermont’s Health Care Reform created a new loan repayment program to attract and retain health care providers working in underserved areas (specialties or geographic) or with underserved populations. The Vermont Health Care Education Loan Repayment Fund, which is administered by the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program at the University of Vermont Medical School, provides awards to Vermont health care providers and faculty educators who have outstanding educational loans, with the agreement that they will provide one year of service to underserved areas or populations for each year of the award.

In addition, health care reform increased an existing education loan forgiveness program that is administered by the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) for dental hygienists and nurses, two specialties that are hard to recruit and retain in Vermont. Please contact VSAC for more information.

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and FQHC look-alikes also are core components of Vermont’s health care system. While FQHCs receive federal grants to offer care to underserved populations, FQHC look-alikes do not. In order to support a statewide network of these organizations, the health care reform legislation provides uncompensated care pool funds for an income-sensitized sliding scale fee schedule for patients at FQHC look-alikes.