THE SOLUTION: WHY SB 726 WILL WORK

Senate Bill 726 will provide a simple, timely solution to the shortage of doctors in California’s rural and urban Medically Underserved Areas by allowing clinics and hospitals to effectively recruit and employ doctors  - offering them a stable salary and standard benefits – and thereby eliminating the economic barriers that make it financially prohibitive for doctors to treat the poor.

Currently, public healthcare facilities-county, state and federal – along with for-profit medical corporations are exempt from the “physician hiring ban” and can freely hire physicians. The problem is that these corporations largely do not serve California’s low income and rural communities.

Under SB 726 existing rural hospitals and voter approved healthcare districts in urban and rural Medically Underserved Area or Health Professional Shortage Areas (which would be publicly owned and operated local governments created by local voters, with their own parcel and property tax bases that will support the cost of physician salaries) would have tools and capacity to address their own healthcare needs and hire needed doctors.  

And, by letting rural and urban healthcare facilities in Medically Underserved Areas employ physicians, they could hire from the pool of International Medical Graduates who require three-year employment contracts in order to obtain a visa.

Direct employment is a model that has been tested and proven both beneficial and effective.  Forty-five other states allow for direct physician hiring. The Medical Board of California supports SB 726 as a safe, reasonable and effective approach to addressing chronic physician shortages in Medically Underserved communities, and the American Medical Association approves of healthcare facilities hiring doctors to meet the medical needs of communities.