Primary Care Loan (October 2000)

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

The Health Professions Education Extension Amendments of 1992 (Public Law (P.L) 102-408) established new requirements for use of Health Professions Student Loan (HPSL) funds for allopathic and osteopathic medical schools. These changes, which do not affect other health professions disciplines, became effective July 1, 1993 and consist of:

• requiring medical and osteopathic students who receive HPSL funds to practice primary health care; and
• instituting a gradual redistribution of medical and osteopathic HPSL funds to schools that demonstrate a commitment to training primary health care physicians.

Aside from the criteria stated above, the PCL program is governed by most of the same requirements associated with the HPSL program. The remainder of the section describes the program requirements for PCL. Where requirements are identical to the HPSL program, readers are referred to HPSL.