A week to focus on the health care workforce
By Matthew Dembicki, Published February 26, 2010

The high-profile federal health care summit may be over, but next week brings other meetings in Washington, D.C., that will focus on another aspect of the industry—its workforce. 

Jobs for the Future (JFF) is hosting two conferences next week that will address issues pertaining to the health care workforce. The Rx for a New Health Care Workforce conference will convene health care policymakers, workforce experts and industry leaders to discuss the role of workforce policy in health care reform and its implications on workers in the industry. Community college officials will talk about educational settings that support workers and work environments that support learning.

Later in the week, JFF will hold a peer-learning conference focusing on community colleges’ and employers’ roles in the development of a health care workforce. Sessions will address the role of two-year colleges in advancing low-skill adults, using work-based learning to serve incumbent workers and helping employers engage in professional development of frontline workers.

The goal of the JFF event is to allow employers and colleges to share ideas for promising practices.

Ideas generated from the meetings may be incorporated into a paper JFF is developing on the topic.

“The nation cannot solve the difficult equation posed by health care reform—to deliver more and better care at lower cost—without working smarter and strengthening the pipeline for filling critical jobs in the health care system,” according to a draft of the JFF paper. “That means we must invest in raising the skills and education of every member of the health care team, not just doctors and other high-level professionals.”

It also includes rethinking how frontline jobs are designed and rewarded, the paper added.

Frontline workers comprise about half of the 12 million people working in the health care sector, according to JFF.

The draft report profiles health care training programs at two community colleges—Owensboro Community and Technical College (Kentucky), which has developed with a local hospital an accelerated pathway to a nursing degree, and Southeast Arkansas College, which operates a fast-track program that focuses on developmental education tailored to students in licensed practical nursing and other allied health professions.

The JFF paper will also include promising training models in the workplace and community, as well as policy suggestions to promote and scale up effective models, improve coordination and remove barriers.

In addition to the JFF events, the American Association of Community Colleges and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching will host a meeting on March 4 to discuss strengthening nursing education to meet workforce needs.