Michigan Providing Training Scholarships for Paramedic Students

In a bid to address the national chronic shortage of EMS professionals as it affects the state of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has funded a statewide EMS workforce training grant program for 2023 to make EMS education and training more accessible. The goal of these grants is to increase the number of people trained in EMS to address the critical shortage of paramedics statewide. Hundreds of EMS positions within the state of Michigan are estimated to be currently unfilled.

“MCRH was awarded $350,000 in Round 1 of the 2023 Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) EMS Workforce Grant,” said MCRH EMS Programs Manager Andrea Abbas. “Established in 1991, the Michigan Center for Rural Health (MCRH) is one of only three non-profit State Offices of Rural Health (SORH) in the country. As Michigan’s SORH, MCRH plays a key role in rural health care by assisting in the creation and implementation of partnerships among organizations, health departments, hospitals, government, and academia. Those collaborations and alliances go on to create new opportunities in the areas of network development, quality of care, emergency medical services, continuing education, and recruitment and retention of rural health care providers.”

The purpose of the MDHHS 2023 EMS Workforce grant is to establish, implement, and operate a workforce development program to be used for training people in emergency medical services. Its goal is to address the critical shortage of paramedics statewide and to increase accessibility to EMS education programming, specifically paramedic programs, in Michigan.

At least 20% of this funding will be dedicated to funding education that targets access to EMS in rural areas of Michigan. In this instance, MCRH is giving preference to student applicants who are single parents, work in rural Michigan communities, veterans, female, and/or from racial or ethnic minority backgrounds.

In simple terms, “the priority of this funding is to decrease the potential barriers for those with a desire to enter the EMS workforce,” said Abbas. To make this happen, MDHHS has identified three potential training uses for this money. One of these is traditional grants up to $20,000 per paramedic student to cover costs of tuition and associated fees for paramedic training at a Michigan-approved education program. Another is hourly reimbursement of paramedic students for time spent in EMS training programs, at a rate of $15/hour, to a maximum of $16,000 per student.

A third option is aimed at EMS educators, who can access this money based on expanding training content and access to EMS education in areas currently not served by initial education programs. “These applicants will be responsible for demonstrating how their proposal increases access to an underserved area,” Abbas said. “This funding may be used for accreditation fees, administration costs, instructor salaries, and so forth.”

The first round of MCRH scholarships closed on September 30, 2023, with the agency providing scholarship funding to 16 aspiring paramedics. “Recently, MCRH has been awarded a second round of funding with an anticipated application period beginning late October or early November of 2023,” said Abbas. “MCRH will communicate the opening of the application cycle through our MCRH communications channels. You can learn more about The Michigan Center for Rural Health at www.mcrh.msu.edu.”