The department, in consultation with appropriate private and public entities, shall establish a health professional recruitment and retention clearinghouse. The clearinghouse shall:

(1) Inventory and classify the current public and private health professional recruitment and retention efforts;

(2) Identify recruitment and retention program models having the greatest success rates;

(3) Identify recruitment and retention program gaps;

(4) Work with existing recruitment and retention programs to better coordinate statewide activities and to make such services more widely known and broadly available;

(5) Provide general information to communities, health care facilities, and others about existing available programs;

(6) Work in cooperation with private and public entities to develop new recruitment and retention programs;

(7) Identify needed recruitment and retention programming for state institutions, county public health departments and districts, county human service agencies, and other entities serving substantial numbers of public pay and charity care patients, and may provide to these entities when they have been selected as participants necessary recruitment and retention assistance including:

(a) Assistance in establishing or enhancing recruitment of health care professionals;

(b) Recruitment on behalf of sites unable to establish their own recruitment program; and

(c) Assistance with retention activities when practitioners of the health professional loan repayment and scholarship program authorized by *chapter 18.150 RCW are present in the practice setting.

*Reviser's note: Chapter 18.150 RCW was recodified as chapter 28B.115 RCW by 1991 c 332 s 36.