The Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development shall, in addition to other duties described in this article, do all of the following:
(a) Determine those areas of the state that are medically underserved in that they have a higher percentage of medically underserved and indigent persons and would benefit from the services of additional persons licensed as physician assistants.
(b) Determine the total cost of seeking cover as specified in paragraph (2) of subdivision (c) of Section 3537.30. To determine the cost, the office shall study the market forces that are at work creating the scarcity of these physician assistants in these medically underserved areas, and determine the annual level of additional funding that would be required by a health facility, clinic, or other health care provider in those areas to motivate a physician assistant to serve full-time in those underserved areas. This amount shall be calculated so that when added to the prevailing rate for these services in the underserved area, would make these positions so attractive that physician assistants would be motivated to serve in those areas. This amount, which shall equal the cost to the office to place a qualified physician assistant in the underserved area, times four years shall be the total cost of seeking cover.
(c) Provide grants, as funds become available in the Physician Assistant Training Fund, to applicant health care providers that provide services in medically underserved areas for the purpose of funding additional full-time physician assistant positions in those areas to provide services in lieu of defaulting physician assistants. Participating providers shall use these grants to attract physician assistants that are from outside the area and shall demonstrate that the grant actually increases the number of physician assistants serving the underserved population. The grantee shall demonstrate that the grant did not merely shift a physician assistant from one medically underserved area to another, but rather, resulted in a net increase in the number of physician assistants serving the underserved population as a whole. Licensees under this article shall not directly or indirectly receive grants under this section.
(Added by Stats. 1993, Ch. 1042, Sec. 3. Effective January 1, 1994.)