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- [00:02]
A
This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. Looking forward to hosting you in Chicago. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm Scott King, joined by a very special guest today, Vaughn Tone Quinlivin, CEO of Futura Health. Vaughn, how are you doing today? Thanks so much for joining us.
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B
Delighted to be here, Scott.
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A
So glad to have you. I know we have a lot to talk about. We're really going to kind of get into, I think, fixing healthcare's workforce crisis. And before I do that, before we jump into the conversation, can you just kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
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B
Well, Scott, my career has spanned the private sector, the public sector, and now nonprofit sector. Expertise is workforce development. And when I was recently approached by, well, five years ago when I was approached by Kaiser Permanente and its partners to found Vitora Health and bring some best practices into this space to address critical short on healthcare workers, I have to say it was quite a thought to think, well, I was running a billion dollar organization previously with the California Community Colleges, which is the largest system of higher education in the country. Do I want to found a new nonprofit? Is that the way to go? And when I thought about it and reflected on it, and especially the fact that I had come to the United States at the age of six out of a war torn situation in Vietnam, I was so pleased to have the opportunity to have education that unlocked opportunities for me. And so in this role, in this and the last role, it's all about unlocking opportunities from others. So really delighted to be here.
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A
Appreciate you sharing your background info there, Vaughn, and your career journey. You know, I've we hear a lot about the employee shortage and workforce shortages in healthcare right now. It seems like an issue that's kind of been going on for a long time. I was on a call with nine COOs of different health systems, all kinds of different makes and sizes. Yesterday they're talking about what the issues they're still having. So is it, do you think it's a good idea for employers to try to solve these workforce shortages on their own or is there another approach they can take?
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B
Well, you know, Scott, I was talking with folks from McKinsey and Company, the management consulting company. And they say healthcare leaders come to them frequently asking whether they should build a university to address the shortage, the many shortages in workforce that is facing health care. We know about the massive shortages in doctors and nurses and other workforce shortages, but what about the 65% of the allied health roles that everyone needs already, you know, 85% of US healthcare facilities report a shortage in these critical workers that we all need, like surgical tech, medical assistance, imaging techs and so on. And so, Scott, you know, it's a myth that organizations need to do workforce development on their own. And especially when it comes to these important allied health roles, it may be better to collaborate than to go solo. And so this is why Kaiser Permanente and its partners launched Vatora Health, my national nonprofit five years ago, using community benefits dollars to share to set up a shared capacity to grow and address this shortage in allied health workers and set up Vetora Health to help the industry. And it's working. I mean, we additionally, you know, we have Stanford Health, Packard Health, Dignity health, Broward Health, UCSF. You know, over the last five years, we've been able to bring over 10,000 untapped talents from communities who have gotten their credentials and qualifications to enter their first and next allied health careers through us. And now Futura Health is a shared resource to grow local health care talent. You know, there's so many people who want to be of service. There are untapped talents in our communities. And when we did a focus group to figure out why they couldn't find their way into health care, there were a number of reasons that we've set up to address. And so we're really proud that in the nine states as well as D.C. in which we have sponsorship to operate, all these individuals are coming out debt free and are entering work these important roles now today in allied health roles. Oh, by the way, Scott, this is our fifth year anniversary. Not only were we asked to share our best practices with the WHO last year, we were also featured on CMS Innovation Day, featured with the National Governors association, and our scholars were featured in the BBC Caring with Courage series that launched this year. So a lot, a lot of good things. And we're looking forward to working with additional partners to bring out these best practices and solutions.
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A
Well, big congratulations. Not just the anniversary, but all those well deserved accolades. That's tremendous. That's the way to go. That's great. And it sounds like you're seeing a lot of positive results for how you're and Futero is addressing that workforce shortage. It sounds like it just kind of requires a shift in mindset and hopefully, you know, we can see more of that in healthcare. And Vaughn, I want to get to, you know, something you actually said you've described the current hiring and graduation mismatch as a fire hose versus a garden hose problem. Can you kind of unpack that metaphor and what it means for healthcare workforce planning?
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B
Well, Scott, you know, your listeners know that all of us who have been in roles of employers put out jobs in a drip, drip, drip format like a garden hose. We put out one job, two job, five jobs. We never put out 30 jobs or 20 jobs at a time. Right. But now think about how higher education works and they put out their graduates in a big old gush, like 30 graduates in May or 20 graduates in May. So it's really like a fire hose phenomenon. And they can't do one person, two person. And especially when then you ask Scott, oh, can you change your curriculum, set up new labs, do the following things. Their economics is one where if they don't have enough enrollment, courses get canceled. The biggest complaint from employers in trying to activate education to come to this common cause of addressing workforce shortages is that they're slow. This is because it's a fundamental mismatch between the fire hose and the garden hose. And so when we think about workforce development, we're trying to reconcile this mismatch in order to facilitate a collaboration where each party does what it does best. For providers, this means bringing kind of unusual allies to come together and play together in a space where healthcare systems may be fiercely competitive for talent. Right. So instead of dripping out five pharmacy techs, if you could pull together the needs across all of these employers and providers, maybe it comes 25. Or with frateral health, because we're working at some scale, we can secure at 75, sterile processing tax, for example. And because we're working with multiple health systems, we have volume. We can ask for larger tuition discounts, better working, better hours, study hours for working adults, group learning situations for cohorts, and also double clicking on an education journey that incorporates our human touch healthcare coursework, which has gotten a net promoter score of 79. Excellent. Not only the learners love it, but the employers love it because it's really drilling down on cultural competence and teamwork, collaboration, all the essential skills for health care. What it also does is it builds adult learner confidence to engage in learning in order to get their credentials and qualifications. We normally think about competing for talent but in the case of workforce development, you want to grow the talent pool together rather than compete in a shallow pool which only drives up the prices for, you know, the wages for talent.
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A
That sounds great, Vaughn. And I actually want to ask you about Futura Health's model because it brings employers, educators and community organizations to the same table. How does the alignment there actually work in practice and what makes it different from traditional workforce development approaches?
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B
Right. So you know, the traditional talent approach is one maybe if you're getting to a point where you're posting and praying and not sure that you're actually going to have a talent pool to draw from, it's time to do to make the investment in workforce development. And I will also say to you that if you only have a strategy that is going out into high schools, it is not enough because that population is shrinking almost in all communities across the country. So where the action is is really adults how to bring untapped talent into the healthcare. And they're very, very interested, but they need to find a way. So, you know, like we were featured on CMS Innovation Day because we have situations like let me tell it in the story of like the individual themselves. So maybe a security guard like Tamika who took care of her mother who had cancer and thought maybe I would like a caregiving role. It was when she found a flyer at her hospital that she signed up with Futura Health. The employer had already sponsored a scholarship so that she could attend debt free. She came out of a phlebotomist and she now a phlebotomist working in health care today. Or it's a situation like justice who had been laid off during the pandemic. He wanted to become a nurse but was trying to earn money. And so he was working at a ramen noodle shop when he found a flyer from his aunt who had worked at a hospital and said you should really give Fatura Health a try. And so he became a medical assistant for us debt free. And not only did he do well in his first job, but he's already been promoted into the second job. And so again he's working in healthcare today and on his way to becoming a nursing student. So there's many stories like that where there are individuals who want to get into health care, but the navigation to get in and the debt load for those who make it in just keeps them on the first rung. And we need to be able to bring people in from the community and grow them because that will not only improve our retention and loyalty, but in the end, improve outcomes for patients because you have a culturally concordant workforce.
- [12:47]
A
That was an incredible story about how someone's journey into healthcare started. Thanks for sharing that. Vaughn, what are the biggest misconceptions employers have about building a talent pipeline and how does your model help address that?
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B
The biggest misconception is that it's an individual sport. Building a talent pipeline is actually a team sport where each player does what it does best. So the most important thing for employers is that the providers and health plans and we have a situation with Health Net right. Right now, which is a health plan that is underwriting scholarship seats so that all the providers in its network in a rural, rural regions have the ability to send some of the frontline staff to skill up and get a next credential. All right, so there's many roles that people could play. But community benefits dollars from a health plan or operational dollars, sorry, community benefits dollars from a health system or their operational dollars or health plan can unlock dollars. These are all ways in which we can braid efforts. So there's someone funding the scholarships. There's. Our work is to set up all the education programs to the quality and standards and we have 41 education providers with 108 campuses, partner campuses, fully integrated to match with what providers need and where the workers are. So exciting to be able to reduce the workload on the, on the employers because building this ecosystem so that it's simple for our community members to get in is a heavy undertaking and we simplify all of that.
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A
Yeah, I think so many great resources available there will definitely reduce that workload. Vaughn, can you share a specific example where collaboration rather than isolated efforts led to a breakthrough solution for a health system or regional market?
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B
I would love to talk about Dr. Lawrence Scherer at Palo Verdes Medical Group. So he took on a clinical student that is a scholar and, and where employers can lean in is of course where competition can occur between providers is really at the point of hiring or the point of clinical. So let's not compete at the beginning. We'll collaborate to build that talent pool and then compete at the point of clinicals or the point of hiring. So Dr. Lawrence Shur was very, very pleased to receive a scholar who was trained through us debt free to be a medical assistant. And what he said was he was particularly pleased. I'm going to give you a quote picture Health can show a student how empathy should be shown. I couldn't have been more impressed. And this is an adult learner who would not have otherwise participated. She had always wanted to go into health care, but life got in the way, which is often the situation of many adults. And we were able to unlock that, rebuild her confidence to begin the journey. And it's a great story in terms of her success with the Palo Verdes Medical group. And then we have HealthNet Health Plan with Centene. They're underwriting a whole set of seats for medical assistance for rural providers. We have Sutter health who underwrote 300 medical assistance seats using the community benefits dollars. And those are all located in geographies where they have facilities. So those are strategic ways in which they work with us and we go and we connect the source. The education partners provide the success coaching to individuals so that they can easily navigate the education journey process. As a matter of fact, Scott, many of these adults, they don't even talk about the free tuition that they get from us. They talk about how our success coaches were there for them in those moments when they thought they couldn't make it through. It's very important working with the adult population to be able to navigate all of these complexities of life so that they can get their credentials and qualifications. But there's so many success stories.
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A
I think it's a great point about having those coaches available. It's one thing to get the opportunity and it's another to get coached in the right way to proceed on your journey. The last thing I wanted to ask you as you look ahead, what structural changes do we need across education policy and employer engagement to meaningfully fix the health care workforce crisis?
- [17:56]
B
Yes, I chair our State Council on Healthcare Workforce Training and Education. And certainly as you go down the list of all the occupations, major occupations in healthcare, there's a shortage, there's a shortage, there's a shortage. There are alternative paths, but it does take intentionality. I really appreciate Becker's healthcare getting the word out that there's a different way, there's a different way of being able to solve the workforce development problem, fix the healthcare workforce crisis. But it does take intentionality and it does take teamwork. And maybe lastly, I'll say there is a win, win, win, win solution out there. You know, it's not only the win is from growing the workforce locally because those who are local in the community are more likely to stay. It's a win because there's goodwill from the community as health systems are bringing opportunity to their community. There's also the win of the 501C3 status, which I know the healthcare leaders know, has been debated, continues to be in debate, and so this is a way to express community benefit. And then of course, most importantly is that with a workforce that is reflective of the communities being served, we all can improve the outcomes for patients and best serve patients. So with intentionality we can collectively deliver on a reliable, diverse and skilled workforce. That's day one ready.
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A
Vaughn, thanks so much for all your great insight on the workforce crisis in health care and tremendous things Futura Health is doing to deal with it. I appreciate you joining us and look forward to working with you again soon.
- [19:50]
B
Thank you so much. Scott.