Enhancing CPCA’s Workforce Portfolio: Workforce Advocacy and Policy Principles
Comprised of 12 members, including board members and representatives from clinics across various regions, the Workforce Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) brings together a diverse range of perspectives to ensure CPCA is strategic in maximizing its resources to support initiatives that address clinic workforce challenges.
Since its formation, the TAC has met monthly and has developed four guiding principles that aim to strategically focus CPCA’s advocacy on areas of greatest impact for health centers. The four advocacy and policy principles include:
Workforce Sustainability: Advocating for funding investments for workforce incentives such as loan repayment, scholarships, retention bonuses that support the immediate recruitment and retention needs of health centers across the state.
Regulatory Flexibility: Leading efforts to streamline the integration of new health center staff by improving and expediting licensing and credentialing processes, ensuring clinics can reduce the time it takes to onboard clinicians.
Career Pathway Expansion: Advocating for increased federal and state funding to support career development programs, such as residencies and pathway programs, that enable health centers to sustainably train and upskill their staff.
Workforce Transformation: Advocating for value-based reimbursement models that recognize the contributions of comprehensive care teams, ensuring financial sustainability for community health centers and encouraging quality patient care.
In addition to these principles, the TAC has engaged with various peer networks to create an advocacy decision-making matrix that helps CPCA prioritize roles for advocacy. This matrix provides a comprehensive, data-driven approach to decision-making, enabling CPCA to determine the level of advocacy required for different workforce roles. The matrix is a systematic framework that allows CPCA to evaluate critical factors such as workforce shortages, potential funding opportunities, impact on health centers’ time-to-fill rates, legislative appetite, and impacts on workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion. By analyzing these factors, CPCA can make informed decisions to focus its workforce advocacy on roles and initiatives with the greatest potential for impact.
This strategic approach not only enhances CPCA’s ability to respond to the most pressing workforce challenges but also strengthens its position as a leading advocate for policies that bolster the healthcare workforce across California. We invite you to explore the detailed principles and strategies crafted by the TAC by downloading the full document.