Primary Health Care Safety Net Clinical Support Staff Receive Loan Repayment Awards from Kaiser Permanente and CCHN

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NEWS RELEASE                                               Contact: Maureen Maxwell
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                 (303) 861-5165, ext. 259
July 1, 2015                                                                   maureen@cchn.org

Primary Health Care Safety Net Clinical Support Staff Receive
Loan Repayment Awards from Kaiser Permanente and CCHN

DENVER – Colorado Community Health Network (CCHN) today announced that 25 primary health care safety net clinical support staff will receive $175,000 in educational loan repayment funding from Kaiser Permanente Colorado through the Preparing the Safety Net for the Future of Health Care initiative. This is in addition to the 26 awardees in 2014. This initiative works to expand and modernize Colorado’s safety net workforce through loan repayment opportunities and professional development trainings.

The 25 loan repayment awardees live and work throughout Colorado. They include medical assistants, dental assistants, dietitians, various technicians, and licensed practical nurses who play an essential role in delivering quality care and implementing health care reform initiatives. The CCHN awardees will receive loan repayment in exchange for an additional one-year service commitment to their clinic. Safety net clinics include community health centers, rural health clinics or community-funded safety net clinics.

These primary health care clinics provide care in medically underserved areas and to medically underserved populations of Colorado. Greater burdens are also being placed on these clinics due to an increasing volume of patients newly insured under the Affordable Care Act and in need of health care.

“Throughout my four years of working for Valley Wide, not a day goes by that I do not appreciate having the opportunity to work here. With this repayment, I can completely pay off my student loan debt and go back to school to further my education and continue helping educate and care for the medically underserved,” said Marisa Antencio, R.N., Valley-Wide Health Systems, Inc.

“Community health center clinical staff are the front lines of delivering care to many of our state’s most underserved patients,” said Jandel Allen-Davis, MD, vice president of government, external relations and research for Kaiser Permanente Colorado. “By supporting this loan repayment program, Kaiser Permanente is able to make it easier for nurses and other health care professionals to work where there’s a critical need. It’s another way we are able to improve the health of the communities we serve.”

Preparing the Safety Net for the Future of Health Care initiative launched in October 2013. Kaiser Permanente made a grant to CCHN for the loan repayment portion of the initiative. In addition to the employees who work for the Community Health Centers that are members of CCHN, CCHN has made the loan repayment program available to employees of Colorado Rural Health Centers and community funded clinics that are members of ClinicNET. The workforce goals of the larger initiative are to:

1. improve retention of health professionals who care for underserved Coloradans, and
2. provide training development webinars for entry and mid-level staff.

In January 2014, CCHN awarded another 26 primary health care clinical support staff with loan repayment funds through the first loan repayment application cycle. The final application cycle will occur in January 2016. Applicants are eligible to receive up to $10,000 in loan repayment, dependent on their completed years of service at their place of employment. Loan repayment awards are made using a tiered approach based on length of employment.

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For more information, please contact Maureen Maxwell at (303) 861-5165, Ext. 259, or maureen@cchn.org.

About Colorado Community Health Network
The Colorado Community Health Network (CCHN) is the unified voice for Colorado’s 18 Community Health Centers (CHCs) and their patients. CHCs provide a health care home to almost 650,000 of their community members – more than one in eight people in Colorado – from 60 of the state’s 64 counties. Without CHCs, hundreds of thousands of Colorado’s low-income families and individuals would have no regular source of health care. CCHN’s mission is to increase access to high quality health care for people in need in Colorado. For more information about CCHN, please visit www.cchn.org.

About Kaiser Permanente Colorado
Kaiser Permanente Colorado is the state’s largest nonprofit health plan, proudly working to improve the lives and health of Colorado residents for more than 45 years. Kaiser Permanente Colorado provides comprehensive health care services to 625,000 members through 28 medical offices and a network of affiliated hospitals and physicians. For the eighth straight year, our health plan was named “Highest in Member Satisfaction” among Colorado Commercial Health Plans by J.D. Power and Associates. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recognized Kaiser Permanente as the top- ranked commercial health plan in Colorado and the sixth ranked Medicare plan in the nation for 2014-15. In 2014, we proudly directed $109 million to community benefit programs to improve the health of all Coloradans. For more Kaiser Permanente news, visit kp.org/share or follow us on Twitter @kpcolorado or facebook.com/kpcolorado.