Financial returns to society by National Health Service Corps scholars who receive training as physician assistants and nurse practitioners

The purpose of this study was to examine the investment return to society and to the individual for the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) scholarship recipients from physician assistant (PA) and nurse practitioner (NP) programs in the United States who would have completed service obligations between the years 2003 and 2006. The study examined the difference in the amount of Federal taxes generated between the pre- and post-training wages compared to the cost of students' scholarship awards and differences in payback potential between NPs and PAs. Differences in foregone earnings, scholarship debt and starting salaries are also compared.This study examined 187 NHSC scholars who would have completed their service obligation between the years 2003 and 2006 in numerous Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) across the nation. The initial data were collected by surveys sent to 314 scholarship recipients as well as existing census data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American Academy of Physician Assistants and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.The major findings of this study were that (a) scholars repaid society's investment within 19 years after graduation, (b) PA scholars generated more tax revenue than NP scholars, (c) time to repayment was highly dependent upon scholarship debt, (d) nurse practitioner students were required to forego an average of...