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The short answer: FRAME pays your clinicians to stay in Florida
FRAME is a Florida student-loan repayment program that pays licensed behavioral health clinicians up to $150,000 over four years to practice in state-designated underserved areas, accept Florida Medicaid where required, and complete 25 volunteer service hours annually. If you run a treatment center in Florida and you are not building FRAME eligibility into your recruiting pitch, you are leaving money on the table that the Florida Legislature has already appropriated.
The Florida Reimbursement Assistance for Medical Education (FRAME) program is administered by the Florida Department of Health in coordination with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). Governor Ron DeSantis signed the 2024 Live Healthy package (SB 7016) on March 21, 2024, and the bill expanded FRAME eligibility, raised award amounts, and added a volunteer-service requirement.
Per the Florida Senate bill summary of CS/SB 7016, the four-year maximum awards are now $150,000 for allopathic and osteopathic physicians, $90,000 for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) engaged in autonomous practice, and $75,000 for non-autonomous APRNs and mental health professionals, plus $45,000 for LPNs and RNs. The Florida Medical Association also secured an amendment clarifying that the four years do not have to be served consecutively. For a behavioral health operator, that non-consecutive language is a direct retention lever.
Why FRAME actually matters: the Florida workforce math
The workforce gap in Florida is not rhetorical. The Florida Center for Behavioral Health Workforce (FCBHW) at USF reports that Florida has 219 federally designated mental health shortage areas, among the highest in the country, and current workforce levels meet just 24% of the state’s total estimated need, per HRSA 2024 data.
The FCBHW dashboard, reported by WUSF, quantifies the gap by profession. Florida is short over 3,500 licensed clinical social workers, over 1,000 licensed marriage and family therapists, over 1,000 licensed mental health counselors, and about 1,500 licensed psychologists. That is one state, one snapshot, four license types. Every one of them is a FRAME-eligible category.
Julie Serovich, dean of USF’s College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, framed the stakes this way when the dashboard launched: “Florida now has a way to see not just where the workforce stands today, but where it’s headed. This dashboard helps us anticipate challenges and gives leaders the evidence they need to strengthen the workforce.” Translation for operators: your census is capped by clinical staffing, and your staffing is capped by a market where the psychiatrist workforce is in steady decline and more than 40 percent of the current psychiatrist workforce is at or beyond retirement age. FRAME is one of the few state-level tools that puts real dollars against that math.
How the 2024 Live Healthy changes actually work
SB 7016 rewrote FRAME in three ways operators should track.
Higher awards and more funding. Per the Florida Senate bill summary, SB 7016 restructures the program to award an eligible practitioner 25% of his or her principal loan balance for each year of service for up to four years. The Florida Medical Association notes that recurring program funding grew from $6 million to $16 million for Fiscal Years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, and Live Healthy added another $30 million to bring recurring funding to a total of $46 million.
Broader eligibility. The Legislature expanded eligibility to include mental health workers, such as clinical social workers, licensed marriage and family therapists, licensed mental health counselors, and licensed psychologists. Applicants must hold a clear/active license through the applicable Florida board (Board of Medicine, Board of Nursing, Board of Psychology, or the Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling) throughout the entire application-to-award cycle.
Volunteer requirement. SB 7016 adds an annual volunteer requirement of 25 hours, which practitioners can fulfill by providing primary care services in a free clinic or through another state-operated volunteer program. The Florida Department of Health has since expanded acceptable activities: volunteer hours spent on disaster relief efforts now also count toward the 25-hour requirement, including cleanup, distribution of supplies, provision of healthcare services, and food pantry work. Track hours the same way you track licensure renewals with the Florida Department of Health Division of Medical Quality Assurance. Errors and incomplete documentation cause processing delays, and FRAME does not operate on a first-come, first-served basis.
What operators should do this quarter
FRAME is a recruiting and retention tool, but only if your operational backbone supports it. Here is what our team tells Florida clients.
- Map your sites against HPSAs. Not every Florida location is FRAME-eligible. Confirm mental health HPSA status through the HRSA shortage-area tool before you advertise the benefit to a candidate.
- Confirm Medicaid participation where required. Eligible FRAME practitioners must accept Florida Medicaid reimbursement, with specific statutory exclusions (correctional institutions, VA clinics, state mental health hospitals, free clinics, and state facilities for the developmentally disabled). If your managed care contracting has gaps in the AHCA Medicaid book, close them before an award cycle opens.
- Build volunteer-hour tracking into HR. Twenty-five hours per year, verified on the FRAME Volunteer Hours Verification Form, is a documentation problem, not a clinical one. Assign an owner. Log hours monthly.
- Layer FRAME with TEACH. The same Live Healthy package created the TEACH program, which per the Senate bill summary reimburses qualified facilities (FQHCs, community mental health centers, rural health clinics, and certified community behavioral health clinics) for the expenses and loss of revenue they incur for providing clinical training to specified health care students and residents, sets a maximum award for each facility of $75,000, or $100,000 if the facility operates a residency program. If your treatment center hosts interns or residents, treat this as a companion revenue line.
- Watch the application windows. The Florida Department of Health announces cycles through the FRAMEworks Portal. Miss the window and you wait a year.
The operator takeaway
Tallahassee is not going to solve Florida’s behavioral health workforce shortage alone. Sanjay Galea at USF put it plainly in a 2026 USF announcement about workforce-training grants: “Delays in access to care, including long wait times between intake and initiation of treatment by a licensed clinician driven by workforce shortages, are one of the greatest challenges facing patients with depression and anxiety.”
Operators who treat FRAME as an HR checkbox will get modest results. Operators who build FRAME, TEACH, HRSA HPSA mapping, AHCA Medicaid contracting, and DCF licensure into a single recruiting and retention system will pull clinicians out of the same shrinking pool their competitors are fishing in. Florida is short over 3,500 licensed clinical social workers alone. That is not a number a job board fixes.
Recruiting is a compliance program stitched to a payer strategy stitched to an HR process. At Atlantic Health Strategies, our team treats licensure with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), accreditation with The Joint Commission or CARF, payer contracting, HR infrastructure, and workforce strategy as one problem, not four. Because they are.
Frequently asked questions
Who is eligible for Florida’s FRAME program in behavioral health?
Per the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling, eligible behavioral health clinicians include licensed clinical social workers, licensed marriage and family therapists, licensed mental health counselors, licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, and APRNs (including autonomous-practice APRNs). Applicants must hold a clear/active Florida license throughout the entire application-to-award cycle, practice in a qualifying underserved location such as a HRSA-designated mental health HPSA, accept Florida Medicaid where required, and complete at least 25 volunteer service hours annually.
How much money can a behavioral health clinician receive through FRAME?
Per the Florida Senate bill summary of CS/SB 7016 (2024), the four-year award maximums are $150,000 for allopathic and osteopathic physicians (including psychiatrists), $90,000 for autonomous-practice APRNs, $75,000 for non-autonomous APRNs and mental health professionals (LCSWs, LMFTs, LMHCs, psychologists), and $45,000 for LPNs and RNs. Awards equal 25% of principal loan balance per year of qualifying service, and the Florida Medical Association confirmed the four years of practice do not have to be consecutive.
How does FRAME interact with the TEACH program for treatment centers?
FRAME funds the clinician; TEACH funds the facility. Under SB 7016, qualified facilities including FQHCs, community mental health centers, rural health clinics, and certified community behavioral health clinics can receive reimbursement to offset the administrative costs and lost revenue tied to training residents and students, with a maximum award of $75,000 per facility, or $100,000 if the facility operates a residency program. Operators who host interns or residents should evaluate both programs together.
How severe is Florida’s behavioral health workforce shortage?
According to the Florida Center for Behavioral Health Workforce at USF, Florida has 219 federally designated mental health shortage areas and current workforce levels meet just 24% of estimated need (HRSA, 2024). The FCBHW dashboard, reported by WUSF, identifies shortages of over 3,500 licensed clinical social workers, over 1,000 licensed marriage and family therapists, over 1,000 licensed mental health counselors, and about 1,500 licensed psychologists. More than 40% of Florida’s current psychiatrist workforce is at or beyond retirement age.
References
- Florida Senate Bill Summary, CS/SB 7016 (Live Healthy, 2024)
- Florida Department of Health, FRAME Program
- Florida Medical Association, FRAME Program Update: Disaster Relief Volunteer Hours
- USF Florida Center for Behavioral Health Workforce, Dashboard Launch (Oct. 2025)
- WUSF, USF launches dashboard showing mental health worker shortage
- Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling, FRAMEmh
- HRSA Health Workforce Shortage Areas Data Portal
- USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Workforce Grant Announcement (May 2026)