Wymyslo: Ohio primary care need requires 'all hands on deck'

Speaking at HPIO's forum on the health care workforce this week, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Ted Wymslo said that the state must encourage inclusion of a wide array of health professionals in its efforts to meet an expected increased demand for primary care in the coming years  (Source: "Doctors: Medical care overhaul needed in Ohio," Newark Advocate, Dec. 5, 2012).

“We’re going to need all hands on deck to get to the issues that we're trying to deal with as a state,” he told the audience. “We’ve got about a million people coming into the ranks of the insured.”

Ohio's efforts to expand its primary care workforce earned praise from keynote speaker Mary Wakefield, the head of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

“Your state, from my vantage point, has really been a leader in this area,” she said. “You’ve been spending a lot of capital, intellectual capital, in thinking about the dimensions and complexities of health professional education and deployment.”

The slides from the presentations at the forum can be viewed at www.hpio.net/events