FY 2024 Annual Performance Plan and Report - Strategic Goal 1: Objective 1.5

Fiscal Year 2024
Released March, 2023

Topics on this page: Objective 1.5: Bolster the health workforce to ensure delivery of quality services and care | Objective 1.5 Table of Related Performance Measures

Objective 1.5: Bolster the health workforce to ensure delivery of quality services and care

HHS supports strategies to bolster the health workforce to ensure delivery of quality services and care.  HHS is committed to facilitating coordinated efforts to address long-standing barriers to strengthening the health workforce.  HHS efforts focus on developing professional development opportunities to learn and use new skills to improve the delivery of quality services and care.  HHS is also strengthening the integration of culturally- and linguistically-appropriate and effective care into the services delivered by the health workforce.

The Office of the Secretary leads this objective.  The following divisions are responsible for implementing programs under this strategic objective: AHRQ, ASPE, CDC, CMS, FDA, HRSA, IHS, OASH, OGA, and SAMHSA.  In consultation with OMB, HHS has determined that performance toward this objective is progressing.  The narrative below provides a brief summary of progress made and achievements or challenges, as well as plans to improve or maintain performance.

Objective 1.5 Table of Related Performance Measures

HRSA’s health professions programs strengthen the health workforce by developing, expanding, and enhancing training for health care professionals, particularly primary care providers, through grants awarded to health professions schools and training programs.  These programs prepare trainees to deliver quality, team-based patient care by offering interprofessional training experiences at clinical sites across the U.S.  This measure calculates the percent of active clinical training sites at which individuals from more than one profession or discipline train together. 

According to annual grantee performance report data, the percentage of sites providing interprofessional training experiences has increased by 18 percentage points from FY 2017 to FY 2021.  The rapid increase in this outcome is primarily due to HRSA’s efforts to increase interprofessional training across more than 40 health professions training programs.  HRSA increased the FY 2024 target to 68 percent to reflect this upward trend.

In 2021, HRSA implemented a new grantee scorecard, and in 2022, HRSA reached grantees from nearly all grant programs with a demonstration of the scorecard’s use.  The scorecard allows program staff and grantees to determine whether individual grant programs and awardees are meeting the interprofessional training target.  Increasing staff and grantee access to the results of this measure is one strategy HRSA developed to ensure it can continue to meet its targets.

HRSA’s health professions programs strengthen the health workforce by developing, expanding, and enhancing training for health care professionals, particularly primary care providers, through grants awarded to health professions schools and training programs.  These programs improve access to health care in our Nation’s communities by training individuals who go on to work in medically underserved areas after completing their HRSA primary care training program.  This measure indicates the percent of individuals who report being employed in an underserved area one-year after they complete a HRSA Bureau of Health Workforce training program.  According to annual grantee performance reports, the number of individuals who completed a HRSA primary care training program and then found employment in medically underserved areas has remained relatively stable from FY 2017 to FY 2021, fluctuating by zero to four percentage points each year.  Given the lack of a clear trend and the potential impact of COVID-19 on program completers’ employment decisions, HRSA is maintaining the FY 2023 target for FY 2024.

In 2021, HRSA implemented a new grantee scorecard that allows program staff and grantees to identify individual grant programs or awardees that may have best practices to share or may need additional assistance to increase program completers’ employment in medically underserved areas.  In 2022, HRSA reached grantees from nearly all grant programs with a demonstration of the scorecard’s use.  Increasing staff and grantee access to the results of this measure is one strategy HRSA developed to ensure it can continue to meet its targets.

On March 27, 2020, the President signed H.R.  748, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act into law.  This historic legislation provided the necessary legislative changes to reinstate/implement the Ready Reserve Corps as well provided the initial funding to build the infrastructure for the program and begin the recruitment and training of the initial cohort.

All USPHS Ready Reserve officers are part-time officers; paid when on Active Duty (such as training or deployment).  Reservists are required to train (drill’) for a minimum of 2 weekends/month (on average) and 14 days/year for annual training.  Reservists are called to active duty for deployment or for training.  Based on critical specialized skill sets, reservists can also be placed on Active Duty (temporary/part-time) to support personnel shortages in HHS/or non-HHS agencies (e.g.  the Indian Health Service or other hard to fill positions).  The Ready Reserve ensures the USPHS has trained, ready and equipped surge capacity to respond to any public health emergency.  Recruitment is focused for high-demand, already-trained clinical professionals.  When not activated, Reservists work in their respective civilian jobs in their communities.

Commissioned Corp Headquarters’ s (CCHQ) Division of Commissioned Corps Services and Ready Reserve Affairs are leading the development and implementation of a comprehensive recruitment strategy and accompanying operations plan to reach the recruitment goals for the Ready Reserve Program.  The framework for this new strategy consists of three key areas of focus:  Communication and Stakeholder Engagement, CCHQ Infrastructure, and Performance Management.  Each focus area contains a series of activities with high impact on the overall strategy as well as a detailed plan of operation.  In addition, the strategy includes a performance management plan that consists of important milestones, key performance indicators, and a risk management plan.

As a new program, upon release of the CARES Act money in July of 2020, many policies and infrastructure related needs had to be created.  While some efforts for this are ongoing, HHS is pleased that OASH has been able to complete many of these endeavors which have provided the structural foundation that has allowed HHS to onboard a quickly growing number of Ready Reserve Officers.  However, in FY 2021, a discrepancy did exist between targets and results.  As described above, the infrastructural needs of a new program limited the agency’s ability to onboard officers to meet initial target goals.  HHS looks forward to meeting the FY 2023 target with the new strategy described above.

Endnotes

¹⁶ Most recent results are for Academic Year 2020-2021 (FY2022) and for clinical training sites funded in FY 2020.

¹⁷ Most recent results are for Academic Year 2021-2022 and for sites funded in FY 2021.

¹⁸ Service location data are collected on students who have been out of the HRSA program for one year. The results are from programs that have the ability to produce clinicians with one-year post program graduation. Most recent results are for Academic Year 2020-2021 (funded in FY 2020) based on graduates from Academic Year 2019-2020).

¹⁹ Service location data are collected on students who have been out of the HRSA program for one year. The results are from programs that have the ability to produce clinicians with one-year post program graduation. Most recent results are for Academic Year 2021-2022 (funded in FY 2021) based on graduates from Academic Year 2020-2021 (funded in FY 2020).

²⁰ ARP Funded