Health Access Zones: income tax: credits.

Existing law establishes the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and requires the office to perform various duties, including preparing a Health Manpower Plan for California, which includes establishing appropriate standards for determining the adequacy of supply in the state of specified categories of certain health personnel. Existing law establishes the California Healthcare Workforce Policy Commission to, in part, identify areas of the state where unmet priority needs for dentists, physicians, and registered nurses exist. This bill would require the Director of Statewide Health Planning and Development and the commission to adopt regulations relating to the designation of health access zones, as defined, for the purpose of targeting state resources to reduce health disparities, increase access to primary care for the state's growing Medi-Cal population, improve health outcomes, and reduce health care costs and hospital admissions and readmissions in certain parts of the state. The bill would require the director and the commission to begin accepting applications from nonprofit community-based organizations and local government agencies for health access zone designation no later than July 1, 2015, and would require the director and the commission to designate areas as health access zones in accordance with specified criteria. The bill would also authorize the director and the commission to issue grants to the nonprofit community-based organizations, local government agencies, and health access zone practitioners, as defined, for specified purposes. The bill would create the Health Access Zone Reserve Fund, which would consist of moneys appropriated by the Legislature, to be used, upon appropriation of the Legislature, by the director and the commission for these purposes. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2021. The Personal Income Tax Law authorizes various credits against the tax imposed by that law. This bill would, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2016, and before January 1, 2021, allow a credit against that tax in an amount equal to $5,000 for each net increase in qualified full-time health access zone employees, as defined, hired during the taxable year by a qualified health access zone employer, as defined. Existing law provides for the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid Program provisions. Existing federal law requires the state to provide payment for primary care services furnished in the 2013 and 2014 calendar years by Medi-Cal providers with specified primary specialty designations at a rate not less than 100% of the payment rate that applies to those services and physicians under the Medicare Program. This bill would require, notwithstanding any other law, that payment for primary care services provided on or before December 31, 2020, by a physician in an area designated as a health access zone be made at the payment rate that applies under those provisions.