WorkforceRx

Too many students go through college focused on fulfilling course requirements for their major with insufficient attention to their actual personal and career interests. The result is they earn empty college degrees that are not connected to the life that comes after graduation. Those provocative conclusions come from a new book called Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter and What Really...

There’s a growing consensus that the best patient care is delivered by multidisciplinary teams, but as you’ll hear on this episode of WorkforceRx, generating solutions to problems facing healthcare and medical education can benefit from the same interprofessional approach. That’s what our guest, Dr. Patricia Cuff, has learned leading the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education...

States are often described as laboratories for public policy development on major issues, generating new best practices that can spread to other states and influence federal action. As an acknowledged leader in working to improve healthcare access and quality, California’s innovations in this area are closely watched, including the unusual step it took in the last few years to allow non-traditiona...

Persistent labor shortages have spurred some healthcare systems to take a “grow-your-own” approach that involves upskilling current employees to supplement external recruitment. Today on WorkforceRx, we’re going to learn about an innovator in this area, Ochsner Health System in Louisiana, which uses coaches, apprenticeships, and flexible pathways to help advance its employee’s skills and careers....

As a physician for many decades and former Secretary of Health and Human Resources in Virginia for eight years, Dr. Bill Hazel has come to believe there is one necessary ingredient to unraveling the very knotty problems the healthcare system faces: collaboration. As he explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, he used his power as Secretary to breakdown government silos to develop multi-age...

To mark the fifth year of our founding and the 100th episode of WorkforceRx, we've tapped a very special member of the Futuro Health family, board member Dr. Joanne Spetz, to share her insights on the nation's healthcare workforce landscape and how Futuro Health fits into efforts to meet the growing demand for allied health workers. “Part of the reason I agreed to be on the board is that Futuro He...

We may soon face a future where AI Agents handle the bulk of low-skilled, entry-level work, forcing educators to figure out how to train people to start their careers in the middle of the ladder instead of on the first rung. That’s the conclusion our guest Matt Sigelman is drawing from research on AI conducted by the organization he heads, Burning Glass Institute, a leading labor market analytics...

On this episode of WorkforceRx, we turn our attention to the challenges and opportunities of one of the fastest growing parts of the US workforce: mid-career and older employees. In fact, the percentage of people over sixty-five who are currently employed is nearly twice as high as it was in the 1990s. “The key driver of the growth we're seeing is an increase in financial insecurity for older adul...

“I really think that everything from this last election to Brexit to the unrest around the country and the world shows that the old economic paradigm of trickle-down economics has left families broke and in debt and in need of a new paradigm,” says Natalie Foster, president of the Economic Security Project. The answer, as she lays out in her new book The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America's N...

One of one of the most significant attempts to spur economic growth and U.S. global competitiveness since the space race was made a few years ago through the CHIPS and Science Act, but many people in workforce development, economic development and higher education aren’t aware of the new opportunities flowing from it. Our guest on this episode of WorkforceRx, Shalin Jyotishi, launched the Future o...

For those who can’t afford to leave their job to earn a degree, there’s a relatively new ‘learn and earn’ model that essentially turns a job into a degree program. It’s called the apprenticeship degree, and we’re going to learn all about it on today’s episode of WorkforceRx from Joe Ross, president of Reach University, which is dedicated to growing this approach. As Ross tells Futuro Health CEO Va...

“The job is broken. Primary care is about relationships and building trust with patients, and knowing who they are as people. You can’t do that in a fifteen minute visit,” says Dr. Alan Glaseroff, a longtime family physician and health care delivery innovator affiliated with Stanford University. Add to that the need to do hours of administrative work on weeknights and weekends, and Glaseroff can u...

Studies show that when it comes to getting people interested in any career, early exposure can make a significant impact on their ultimate choice. That helps explain why a program in Nebraska that’s aimed at cultivating interest in healthcare jobs begins in the third grade. As we learn in this episode of WorkforceRx, the Health Careers Pipeline Initiative is just one of several workforce developme...

Today we’re going to take a look at how America’s largest state is tackling one of the biggest challenges in the nation’s healthcare system: increasing the supply of behavioral health providers. As we’ll hear from our guests on this episode of WorkforceRx, heightened attention to the issue from California Governor Newsom‘s administration has led to more funding and a greater degree of coordination...

There are many stakeholders in the ongoing effort to combat healthcare workforce shortages but one of the most important is state governments because of their critical role in providing healthcare services. Today on WorkforceRx, we're going to check in with one of the states that is leading national efforts to find solutions by talking with Jennifer Davis, Senior Policy Advisor on Human Services t...

“Anyone who feels like they want to go to college should be able to go, but having just one choice for every young person entering the labor market seems like a mistake,” says John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America. Opening a second pathway of apprenticeship would not only serve those for whom college is not a viable option, Colborn argues, but it would also help employers...

Boosting completion rates at higher education institutions in the US has been a hot topic for years, with particular concern given to the relatively low 43% rate for community colleges. We're going to take a look at solutions to that problem today with Dr. Steve Handel, director of strategy for Post -Secondary Education Transformation at ECMC Foundation. “Part of the work we would like to do is fi...

One of the oldest forms of training, apprenticeship, has new relevance in the age of AI according to today’s WorkforceRx guest Vinz Koller, a nationally influential voice on the subject and self-described apprenticeship evangelist. Why? Because the pace of change brought about by AI and other technologies has accelerated to a point where predictions about what specific skills workers in most field...

Our exploration of solutions for growing and strengthening the direct care workforce continues on this episode of WorkforceRx with a close look at a potentially transformative employee-owned cooperative model that’s gaining traction in California. In the eyes of our guest, Aquilina Soriano Versoza, the higher pay and better working conditions that co-ops can provide will help grow an urgently need...

“I think training is gonna be so different looking in the next few years than what we're used to,” says Anson Green who brings a very seasoned eye to the workforce training landscape. After decades working in adult education, Green is now helping Tyson Foods train an incredibly diverse global workforce and, in the U.S. 60% are immigrants with very limited digital and language skills. As he explain...

“I'm able to be here with you today because my son is at a wonderful childcare provider home,” says WorkforceRx guest, Rachel Wick, to illustrate how critical direct care workers are to our lives and economy. Wick, the senior program officer for Blue Shield of California Foundation, describes childcare and direct care provided in the home for the elderly and disabled as ‘the work that makes all ot...

If you would love to know what’s on the minds of the leaders of the nation’s largest health systems as they tackle workforce challenges and a host of other issues, but don’t happen to have the time to talk to all 150 of them, then this episode of WorkforceRx is for you. The well-placed source supplying this intelligence is Renee DeSilva, CEO of The Health Management Academy which provides advice,...

Evolving employee expectations for working conditions and years of a tight labor market have created steady challenges for human resources professionals. For a look at how those roles are evolving in response, and, to learn about current best practices, we turn today to Wendi Safstrom, president of the SHRM Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the world's largest HR professional society. “We're pr...

For those concerned about teacher burnout and retention issues in K-12 education, Curtis Johnson has seen an innovative model in action that could provide an answer: let teachers run the schools. Johnson, a veteran educator, policy analyst and author, says there are already several hundred such schools in twenty-three states, what he describes as a slow growing movement. While interviewing staff a...

As almost any employer can tell you, today’s workers have high expectations for compensation, the quality of their work experience, and the level of work-life balance. Today’s WorkforceRx guest, David Jarrard, would add one key item to that list: they also expect to have a voice when organizations make important decisions. That means leaders have to engage with workers, not just communicate to the...