Workforce development: Your organization is only as strong as its people

Duncan Regional Hospital uses its annual team member engagement survey to help workers enhance their workplace and careers, resulting in higher satisfaction for staff and patients.

Broader staff access to more applications, more computing power and greater mobility are just some of the cloud benefits healthcare providers are using to empower their workforce.

Finding the best care for a patient can be a constantly moving target. The number of stakeholders, the constant advance of new information and treatment options and the nuanced demands of different payers make for a maze of complexities to navigate. In the field of oncology, for example, nobody but a specialist could be expected to keep up with the growing wealth of knowledge in the treatment of individual cancers. Yet most patients are treated by general oncologists who may not be abreast of every best course of action for specific conditions. These practices might not know which treatments a patient could be pre-approved for, or which payers are most likely to compensate and for what. As the practice of tailoring precision medicine plans for each patient takes hold, physicians are being asked to make more specific treatment decisions than ever before. "You have labs, you have payers, you have providers and you have pharma – and they’re all interested in what the doctor is about to do with a patient," said Clynt Taylor, CEO of Intervention Insights, which makes a tool called Trapelo that helps streamline treatment and payment options. Taylor says that giving an oncologist "an opportunity to see what they should be ordering based on the clinical scenario" empowers them to make the best decision for the patient. Information is inspiration "Most doctors have a good idea of what they want to do," said Taylor. "It’s information access that’s really holding up the process: ‘I didn’t know the lab could do that, I didn’t know these genes should be tested.’" Effective deployment of an IT system that can gather all of this information and put it at an oncologist’s fingertips, integrated into their workflow, helps align the interests of everyone involved. In precision medicine, every decision has to be tailored to the patient at hand. This requires significant knowledge about everything in a field where treatment options and knowledge about the disease are advancing rapidly. Doctors need to know their options in a way that relates to the patient and which a payer will approve. "If I order a test, will I get a treatment option that is supported by clinical evidence?" said Taylor. "Or will I get treatment options I can’t use?" Taylor notes that health plans "will pay if there’s evidence." But that puts the onus on providers to have conversations with the payer at the beginning of the care process to build a case for a specific treatment regimen. Integrating payers into the treatment option plan helps form a more granular narrative of care. "Payers not usually involved until the end of treatment selection process," said Taylor. "Docs go through the process, made treatment decisions, submitted to payer and the payer says ‘what’s going on?’ Involving them earlier in the process avoids the situation where payer prior authorization is a holdup." Having a picture at the onset of care of how to proceed and the likely outcomes enables a much better relationship with the payer and delivers the most effective care possible for an individual. Deep insights have been helping physicians predict the best treatment course in a number of fields; tying the process to the payer conversation makes for a more streamlined transition from treatment to payment. Taylor notes that as more data is amassed about precision health, the more seamless the whole process will become. "The more we can streamline communications through automation, the faster a decision can be made," he said. Benjamin Harris is a Maine-based freelance writer and former new media producer for HIMSS Media. Twitter: @BenzoHarris.

The Wisconsin health system also has introduced new career paths within its information technology department.

As companies work to improve their drug discovery processes and foster other new innovations, cloud technology is enabling easier collaboration among researchers worldwide.

Community Classroom, part of BioEnterprise’s Health IT in the CLE program, works to build the healthcare workforce by giving high school students computer and data science instruction.

Sault Tribe Health Division also uses its specialized IT system to manage digital incident reporting and credentialing management.

Forty-nine percent of surveyed physicians who had remained independent since 2011 attested to meaningful use of EHRs.

And that's because too many board members don't have the right level of IT and security expertise, a new Black Book study suggests.

As part of the deal, which involves nonclinical technologies, about 540 health system staff will become Optum employees.

Competition, an aging workforce, an outdated image contribute to staffing shortages for the health insurance industry.

The list of healthcare jobs the AHIMA Foundation program can help fill and upskill is long and varied, including clinical documentation improvement specialists, data analysts, medical and clinical lab techs, privacy and security officers and more.

Commonwealth Corporation, a workforce development agency that works to boost the skills of Massachusetts young adults with investments and partnerships, has released new funding to create new pilots to expand training for entry-level healthcare workers. WHY IT MATTERS The money for the pilots comes after Massachusetts' Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning issued a report and recommendations to Gov. Charlie Baker, making the case that "healthcare, information technology and advanced manufacturing are among the most vital employment sectors for Massachusetts’ future prosperity" and "should be important focal points of any meaningful effort to align lifelong learning opportunities with employer needs." Three partnerships will get as much as $200,000 each via two-year grants to help develop and new digital or hybrid competency-based training programs for entry-level healthcare workers. The money will support an initial Program Design phase and subsequent implementation, including tuition for a first cohort of students. THE LARGER TREND Despite being a world leader in the healthcare and technology industries, Massachusetts is still home to thousands of employees in entry- and mid-level healthcare jobs – home health aides, certified nursing assistants, direct care workers and others – who don't have sufficient access to education and skill-building opportunities, the Commonwealth Corporation noted. Meanwhile, many employers in healthcare and beyond are grappling with worker shortages that are hindering their ability to deliver high-quality care. The goal of this new initiative is to help upskill employees such as those with digital training programs, accomplishing the dual goal of boosting economic opportunity for workers while addressing healthcare's workforce shortages. ON THE RECORD Commonwealth Corporation illustrated the kind of worker who might benefit from these programs by describing an entry-level healthcare worker named Carla. "A single mother with a high school diploma who immigrated to the United States eight years ago, her wages are now $14 an hour, making it a struggle for her to support her family even when she works more than 40 hours a week. Despite these challenges, Carla has consistently demonstrated passion for her work, earning praise from both her patients and employer, who cite her caring approach, diligence and interest in continuing to improve her practice. "Carla would like to advance professionally, but she can’t figure out how to participate in the required training. She needs to continue to work as the sole caretaker of her two youngest children and she shares her car with her 19-year-old daughter, who attends a community college and works evenings. Carla’s circumstances make returning to the classroom an unrealistic – and unaffordable – option. "With the rising demand for community-based care, Carla’s employer also faces growing challenges filling open positions. The company wishes to build a career advancement ladder to develop the skills of staff like Carla and other promising colleagues, but it lacks the knowledge and capacity to provide in-house training. And low margins for reimbursable time make it nearly impossible to schedule sufficient training time during the work day." The hope with this new funding is to create new opportunities for employees and employers alike, and better position Massachusetts' workforce for the future of digital health. .jumbotron{ background-image: url("https://www.healthcareitnews.com/sites/hitn/files/u6245/workforce%20development%20jumbotron.png"); background-size: cover; color: white; } .jumbotron h2{ color: white; } Focus on Workforce Development In July, we'll speak to experts about how they're managing their workforces – not just clinicians, but IT departments, data scientists, care managers, back office staff and others. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

The program is a labor of love for the health system’s chief information and administrative officer. And it’s helping entry level employees in IT move up to principal engineer/senior analyst.

Physicians of almost all age groups show an interest in pursuing telemedicine jobs or service lines.

The 10-year initiative will focus on workforce development, education and training for next-generation care delivery.

The vendor’s research team will work on the Houston-based provider organization’s campus with medical staff, scientists and engineers to develop non-surgical medical robotics systems.

Accenture's Kaveh Safavi discusses healthcare's outsized spend on labor – and how machine learning, telehealth and consumerism are transforming how work is done and who does it.

Deborah Heart and Lung Center’s workforce development program for its health IT team centers around staff experts who teach new recruits about how technology works there – and across the wider healthcare industry.

In its review of physician supply and demand, the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of up to 67,000 specialists by 2032.

While the unemployment rate remains relatively unchanged at 3.7 percent, the unemployment rate for hospitals stands at about 1.6 percent.

More than half of facilities met the expected level of staffing less than 20% of the time during the one-year study period.

A study in Health Affairs finds that strategies for managing how in-basket messages are generated and presented could improve the job satisfaction of frontline clinical staff.

The money will help Atlanta University Center Consortium Data Science Initiative improve education in healthcare analytics at historically black colleges and universities.

As hospitals and ambulatory sites grapple with the challenges of quality improvement, value-based care, cybersecurity and more, the size and shape of the workforce is changing as technology and imperatives evolve.

The grant will advance careers in an industry short on labor.

More than 70% of Virginia hospitals that garnish wages are nonprofit, and the money collected is only a tiny percentage of revenue.

Nearly half of the 10,000 critical care physicians practicing in the U.S. reported symptoms of severe burnout.

Just one subtle comment expressing workplace frustration was enough for people to view someone as a less credible health professional.

With the new tech, Indiana group practice Community Health Network is aiming for more ambient physician experiences that leverage smarter, artificial intelligence-driven workflows.

Some health systems are viewing these academic medical center acquisitions as a means of getting closer to the talent pipeline.

Although hiring in healthcare has slowed, the trend has been positive overall, with the industry adding about 391,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

Moreover, the majority of respondents to a new survey had never encouraged patients to leave online feedback in the first place, although feedback on reviews or ratings sites was seen as more useful than social media feedback to help improve services.

The elite corps of chief digital officers emerging today are both business-minded and tech-savvy and use those skills to rethink operations.

A better clinician experience makes for higher-quality patient care, according to a new report from KLAS' Arch Collaborative, which makes the case for bigger investment in end-user education.

Healthcare systems need to collaborate on defense and rely on AI and machine learning to respond to new threats, study finds.

Even as EHRs, telemedicine and AI continue to transform clinical practice, certain core human qualities – civility, respect, empathy, collaboration – are "what make us valuable."

Any medical group requires a strong leader, and the most important qualities to look for are dependent on the needs of the organization.

Too many well-meaning providers are "yessing" themselves into serious overwork, putting their health and their patients' health at risk, says one doctor who learned that the hard way – and did something to fix it.

Just 31 percent of clinical leaders have a designated nursing leader whose primary responsibility is innovation.

More and more health systems are taking steps to "fully unleash nurse innovators at the leadership level," a new report shows, tapping their specialized expertise for technology deployment, process improvement, patient experience and more.

Evaluators often used personal descriptors to describe a student's performance, and they used strikingly different words for men and for women.