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Replacing outgoing healthcare workers remains the industry’s great long-term threat. Earlier this month, higher education institutions and the industry in the state released a collaborative plan to produce those skilled workers.
Michigan’s public universities will work with the state’s community colleges to make four-year nursing degree education available away from the ivory tower of their universities.
Prospective nurses would be able to earn a bachelor’s in nursing at 28 community college campuses with cooperation from local employers and workforce development agencies.
However, funding remains the hurdle. The organizers of the plan — the Michigan Community College Association, Michigan Association of State Universities, Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities and the Michigan Health and Hospital Association — are seeking $56 million from the state to supply grants to students that completed an associate in nursing degree. Under that plan, each community college would be eligible for $2 million in grant funding for students in hopes of boosting bachelor’s degrees among nurses.
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“The plan ensures that Michigan nursing students have every option possible to get high-quality education and training on nearly every college, university or community college campus in this state,” Robert LeFevre, president of the Michigan Independent Colleges and Universities, said in a press release.
Trinity Health, the national health system of 88 hospitals based in Livonia, isn’t waiting for the structural fixes needed to boost healthcare workers.
Trinity is expanding an apprenticeship program launched in 2016 in West Michigan to more hospitals.
“At that time, we had a demand issue with medical assistants that led to us have to reduce some of our practice hours,” said Shana Lewis, vice president of talent acquisition and workforce development programs for Trinity. “When we saw our turnover data and forecasting, we thought we should try an apprenticeship program like manufacturing and construction do.”
The program, developed with Grand Rapids Community College and Michigan Works!, is 12 months long and has boosted Trinity Michigan’s medical assistant retention rate to 76 percent one year after graduating from the program. The health system has trained 129 medical assistants since launch six years ago.
Most certification programs, like a medical assistant or nursing assistant, are external six-week programs that charge students fees. In Trinity’s program, students are paid to participate in the classroom three days a week and in the hospitals two days a week.
Trinity has since launched four more apprenticeship programs in clinical documentation, coding, surgical technology and image processing.
Trinity is also taking its medical assistant apprenticeship program it launched in Michigan to its hospitals nationally starting in July.
“We’re exploring other ways of introducing the apprenticeship program in any space we have workforce gaps which is pretty much every sector,” Lewis said. “This is 100 percent pipeline building and designed to start individuals down a career path in healthcare.”
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