About 100 stakeholders in the future of the healthcare industry took part in the first Healthcare Sector Summit at the Monticello Community Center last Friday.
The event was sponsored in part by CentraCare Health and hosted by the Region 3A Leadership & Planning Board, Stearns-Benton Employment & Training Council and Central MN Jobs & Training Services.
Representatives from hospitals, clinics, educational institutions and local government were on hand to talk about, and look at solutions to an ongoing shortage of healthcare workers in Central Minnesota and across the state.
Luke Greiner, regional labor market analyst with the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), said the latest job vacancy survey showed there were more than 11,000 job openings in healthcare in Central Minnesota in the second quarter of 2016. And with the aging population, the demand for nursing and residential care workers will continue to rise in the forseeable future.
David Borgert, director of community and government relations with CentraCare, said hospitals and nursing homes are stressed because of the shortage. He said the shortage has multiple causes.
“We have a volume issue. Not enough young people are entering into our healthcare education programs,” he said. “That’s a recruiting issue, and we as educators and providers need to address that together to convince more people of the value of a healthcare career.”
He said educational institutions aren’t graduating enough people in the healthcare field.
“The size of the pipeline isn’t big enough,” he said. “Our programs have shrunk to the point where they can’t produce enough to even replace the people who are retiring at this point.”
He said there are barriers in education that make nursing certification more challenging, like having to repeat classes because the curriculum in some schools isn’t the same.
“If you’re an advanced degree nurse (ADN) for 20 years and you want to complete your bachelor of science in nursing (BSN), you have to take Math 101. Clearly that individual has the skills in 20 years of practice,” he said. “We have to work on those barriers.”
Erich Stolz Spencer, HR strategy director with Fairview Health Services, said over the last 18 months Fairview has had 238 nursing positions open. He said staffing is difficult now and will get even harder since large percentage of healthcare workers are between the ages of 45 and 55.
“A lot will be retiring in the near future and we don’t have the talent pool to replace them,” he said.
Spencer said the only solution is a joint effort between healthcare providers, educators, government and the community.
“We need partners that are going to help us solve this pipeline issue and help us figure out how we can get to that talent sooner and how we can get them ready to enter those career paths,” he said.
Part of the summit included each attendee participating in a round table discussion. The group was divided into 10 smaller groups where they talked about identifying healthcare issues, their causes and what could be done to solve those issues.
After an hour, one member from each group gave a summary of their discussion.
The top issue was a healthcare worker shortage, and there was a whole list of causes, including low salaries, poor marketing, no coordination between providers and schools, very few places for internships, high educational costs and burnout.
Some groups had similar solutions: Look at increasing salaries; eliminate barriers in schools to make it easier to switch healthcare careers; get into schools earlier to promote healthcare careers; look for grants for scholarships; pass legislation to fund healthcare opportunities and work with foundations to offer scholarships.
Other ideas included offering on-site childcare for healthcare workers, eliminating the stigma about gender in nursing, invest more in career counseling and getting retiring healthcare workers to teach younger ones.
Everyone agreed it would require a partnership to solve, and moderator Cindy Shore said all of the day’s efforts would help towards forming a plan.
She invited everyone to the next healthcare summit next April.
