WASHINGTON – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday a $250 million federal investment aimed at increasing the number of primary care health professionals.

The money comes from prevention and public health funds in the Affordable Care Act.

The plan, which is focused on training new primary care providers, does not include funding specific for health information technology. However, the program benefits from federal investments from the health reform legislation and from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act aimed at encouraging the meaningful use of health information technology, said Mary Wakefield, administrator, HHS Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

HHS announced these five programs:

• Creating additional primary care residency slots:  $168 million for training more than 500 new primary care physicians by 2015;
• Supporting physician assistant training in primary care:  $32 million for supporting the development of more than 600 new physician assistants, who practice medicine as members of a team with their supervising physician, and can be trained in a shorter period of time compared to physicians;
• Encouraging students to pursue full-time nursing careers:  $30 million for encouraging over 600 nursing students to attend school full-time so that they have better odds of completing their education;
• Establishing new nurse practitioner-led clinics:  $15 million for the operation of 10 nurse-managed health clinics which assist in the training of nurse practitioners.  These clinics are staffed by nurse practitioners, which provide comprehensive primary health care services to populations living in medically underserved communities.
• Encouraging states to plan for and address health professional workforce needs:  $5 million for states to plan and implement innovative strategies to expand their primary care workforce by 10 to 25 percent over ten years to meet increased demand for primary care services.

Sebelius said the "severe shortage" of primary care physicians is well known, and that doing something about it is "a personal priority of President Obama."

"Our health system has not valued primary care providers enough," Sebelius said.

Joining Sebelius at the news conference in addition to Wakefield were U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, co-chair of the House Nursing Caucus and HHS Assistant Secretary for Health, Howard K. Koh, MD.

Koh said the programs would also focus on prevention.

"We want to promote prevention at all levels of society," he said. "I've seen firsthand the need for more prvention. He said the country's healhcare system should focus on wellness and prevention rather than a system that is "focused almost solely on treatment, often delivered late."