Writing Prescriptions for the Health Care Workforce

Today is the start of a two-day meeting that both draws on the experience of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and could provide important suggestions on how the Fund and its affiliates could move forward on a policy agenda to help low-wage employees succeed and businesses compete. Called Rx for the Health Care Workforce, the meeting’s goal is to address a central challenge to the potential of the nation’s health care system to deliver affordable, accessible care: the need for a skilled health care workforce, particularly on the front lines of care.

The National Fund is one of three of the initiatives that Jobs for the Future partners that are central to the convening, along with Jobs to Careers and Breaking Through. Today’s sessions looked at what these initiatives have to say about what works on the ground. For example, Ron Hearn of the Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare, reported on his organization’s achievements as of the nation’s most notable workforce partnerships in health care. BACH came together in 2005 to address critical labor shortages in the city’s health care industry and the needs of unemployed and underemployed city residents for training and jobs, and it’s founders included seven major hospitals; two- and four-year colleges and the Baltimore school system; regional municipal workforce agencies; and community-based and philanthropic organizations.

With support from both the National Fund and Jobs to Careers, BACH has mapped career ladders in five member hospitals, illustrating how lower-skilled workers can advance to higher-paying jobs. As a strategy for retaining staff and helping them advance, employers and foundation members have pooled efforts to support and scale up career coaching for hospital workers, and they offer professional development for coaches. Currently, nearly six hundred workers across six hospitals receive coaching services, and they have received wage increases averaging 14 percent.