Roughly 70,000 workers at California’s community health clinics will receive retention bonuses of $1,000 as part of a last-minute budget deal between Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators.
The payments will go to frontline health care workers who staff so-called “safety net” clinics where millions of Californians seek care when they have Medi-Cal coverage or no insurance at all. Their employers are rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers and health centers run by the Indian Health Service.
One labor group, the Service Employees International Union California, said its members had been advocating for retention payments for a year now to reward workers who serve many low-income, immigrant, and refugee families.
“We are devoted to our patients and work our hardest to make sure they receive timely access to quality care, but without enough health care workers, it’s been a real challenge,” said Angela Millan, who guides patients through the admissions process at Modesto’s Golden Valley Health Center.
Millan said that, because the right staffing isn’t in place, she’s seen patients wait for weeks for an appointment or hours in the waiting room, only to learn that they can’t be seen.
“The retention bonus is an important step in helping keep more health care workers to serve California’s poorest communities,” said MIllan, a member of SEIU 521.
The Department of Health Care Services will oversee distribution of the retention payments, just as it is doing with a larger program of bonuses for health care workers that the governor and legislators approved earlier this year. That round benefited frontline health care workers at acute care hospitals, government-operated hospitals, affiliated physician practice groups, skilled nursing facilities, and even many companies contracting with these institutions.
Details about these new bonuses, part of the clinic workforce stabilization retention payment program, are contained in Assembly Bill 204 and Senate Bill 121.
Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo, D-Los Angeles, said community clinics need to be able to recruit staff who can meed the needs of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
“The announcement of these retention bonuses brings hope to thousands across California, as it will assist in ensuring the presence of adequate personnel and resources at California’s community clinics, Carrillo said in a news release issued by SEIU California. “Our frontline healthcare workers were the first line of defense against the devastating onslaught of COVID-19, and the staffing challenges they faced left them overlooked and overwhelmed. We must be bold in our effort to give clinic workers everything they need to be successful.”
SEIU California, which partnered with a number of clinic operators to advocate for the retention payments, noted that more than seven out of 10 community health center patients are people of color, one in two are Latino, and more than half fall well under the federal poverty line.
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