Grant to Establish Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Workforce Shortage Designation Awarded to the Michigan Center for Rural Health (MCRH)

East Lansing, MI – The Michigan Center for Rural Health (MCRH) has been awarded $277,497 in grant funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund (Health Fund). The Special Projects and Emerging Ideas grant award will be used to develop a methodology to understand the EMS workforce shortage. This project work will provide a data-driven approach to allocate resources across the state effectively, leading to improved service delivery and potential policy changes. 
 
Over the next 18 months, MCRH will use this Health Fund grant to leverage relationships with key stakeholders, and in-house expertise, to develop an EMS Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) methodology. A HPSA designation identifies an area, population, or facility experiencing a shortage of health care services. As it currently stands, there is no designation to identify shortages of pre-hospital care professionals for rural Michigan.
 
Developing this HPSA designation will bring awareness and understanding to the pre-hospital provider workforce disparities in rural communities across the state of Michigan. Andrea Abbas, EMS Programs Manager, noted that "MCRH is excited to broaden our EMS project work through this data-driven research project focused on the EMS workforce shortage in the state of Michigan."
 
“Our office is grateful to have the Health Fund recognize this need,” said MCRH Executive Director John Barnas. “This grant will provide the resources necessary to develop a quantitative approach to determining need based upon a workforce ratio for a given county/area in rural Michigan.”
 
In addition to the new HPSA designation, MCRH has been diligent in its focus on the state’s EMS workforce shortage. In early 2023, MCRH was awarded $350,000 from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and created the EMS Workforce Grant Scholarship program. This established a workforce development program used for training people in emergency medical services to address the critical shortage of paramedics statewide and to increase accessibility to EMS education programming, specifically paramedic programs, in Michigan.

To learn more about the EMS HPSA Designation Project and its impacts on rural Michigan moving forward, please contact MCRH EMS Programs Manager, Andrea Abbas ([email protected]). 

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