ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — New Missouri laws will help pay back student loans for healthcare workers who choose to work in rural parts of the state and increase the number of residency programs.
State Representative Kent Haden sponsored HB 542, which would award $4.9 million to expanding an existing program that repays student loans for healthcare workers. It pays the loans off of people who want to go into high-need areas.
“One of the things we found is that Missouri only has one county that has adequate health care,” Haden said. “[The] Department of Health will determine what those high need areas are and they administrate the program.”
Haden also sponsored HB 1162, which will create 20 new residency programs in Missouri over the next ten years and include specialties like OBGYN, psychiatry and pediatrics.
“We have a lot of highly trained, have a lot of money involved talent," Haden said. About four or five percent don’t match a year, so we got a lot of doctors that we could that we aren’t using.”
Second-year medical student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Holden Joynes, says this is a good idea. Students who get to experience rural life during residency are more likely to stay beyond their program.
“The rate at which people are staying at those areas is increasing if you give them the opportunity to stay there and see that it’s more than just farmland and things like that,” Joynes said.
Joynes says laws like these are a great first step. He believes more people will choose to work in underserved areas especially if financial barriers are removed.
Joynes goes up in Nixa, Missouri — a small town just south of Springfield. He saw how a lack of adequate healthcare can affect the well-being of his family and neighbors.
This is one of the reasons why he wants to take his degree back to rural Missouri. But with crippling debt, a lot of medical students end up choosing urban hospitals that often pay more.
Medical students like Joynes will graduate with an average of $200,000 in student debt.
“Whenever you get out of medical school, you are in a massive amount of debt,” Joynes said. “I’m not from a very well-off family, like rural Missouri. We were barely middle class my entire life and you know I am having to take out loans.”
In addition to laws like these, he says solutions must start at the top with a tuition cap.
”The amount of money you need to take just to get an education is astronomical,” Joynes said.
