Policy Corner July 2017
Everything you need to know about the rural preceptor tax credit!
After over three years of working with health professional schools, the Colorado General Assembly, the Department of Revenue and our partner health advocacy organizations, the Rural & Frontier Health Care Preceptor Tax Credit has been finalized!
HB16-1142 created an annual $1000 individual income tax credit for primary care preceptors in rural Colorado to offset the costs of their voluntary mentorship. The tax credit lifts some of the financial burden for rural primary care providers who provide these voluntary mentorships, offsetting some of the costs of seeing fewer patients per day and working additional hours.
Rural primary care providers serve as the first point of contact for a patient and are on the front lines of quality health care access every day. Many rural providers are the only healthcare provider for hundreds miles, meaning they may be called upon to do everything from delivering a baby, to addressing trauma, to diabetes management. As such, rural healthcare providers must be adequately trained to provide a broad spectrum of medicine to their community. Their value is indispensable. A single rural provider adds $889,000 to a community’s economy annually and supports an additional 23 jobs.
Unfortunately, on average, it takes over 1 year, sometimes more than 3 years, to recruit a physician and more than 6 months to recruit an advanced practice nurse or physician assistant. Also in Colorado, the number of available preceptors falls far short of the need for rural student rotations. This means we have medical students at our Colorado institutions of higher education who want to learn and train in rural areas, but not enough rural primary care providers to train them. This exciting new incentive is designed to incentivize rural primary care preceptors, increase the number of rural primary care rotations, and ultimately increase the number of primary care providers in rural Colorado.
A big thank you to CRHC members, health professional school representatives, our state legislators, and our partners at the Colorado Academy of Physicians, Colorado AHECs, and Colorado Dental Association for their hard work and commitments to the rural primary care workforce!
The Details:
Who: Rural primary care preceptors, including: Family Physicians, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Advanced Practice Nurses, Physician Assistants and Dentists.
What: $1000 tax credit against taxes owed per income year for an eligible preceptorship provided during the tax year in which the credit is claimed.
When: Eligible preceptorships taking place in tax income years 2017-2019.
Where: Eligible preceptorships must take place in a rural or frontier Colorado county. Check out our county designation map here.
Check out our fact sheet for more details on how to claim the credit. Only 200 credits are available for tax income years 2017-2019, so be sure to share this information with your preceptors! To ensure the reauthorization of the credit in the 2020 state legislative session, please encourage participating preceptors to complete our survey upon claiming the credit: https://coruralhealth.org/preceptor-survey
For any questions about the tax credit, contact me at ke@coruralhealth.org, or 720-248-2748. You can also contact your local AHEC office.
