Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Building a Sustainable Nursing Pipeline Through Education and Innovation

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Building a Sustainable Nursing Pipeline Through Education and Innovation · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

• 0:00
  Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
• 0:02
  Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
• 0:03
  the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Fantastic to have
• 0:06
  you. And even more fantastic to be joined
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  by Steve Tatum. He's the vice president of
• 0:10
  strategic healthcare solutions at Orbis Education. Steve, thanks
• 0:14
  so much for being here today. It's great
• 0:15
  to have you. Thank you for having me.
• 0:16
  Yes. Absolutely. I do wanna start off with
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  introductions for our audience that might not know
• 0:20
  you yet at least. If you could just
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  tell us a little bit about your your
• 0:23
  work in health care and and your journey
• 0:25
  so far. Yeah. Sure. So I actually started
• 0:28
  my career in macroeconomics,
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  and I was paying a lot of attention
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  to demographics and I was seeing the big
• 0:33
  shifts that are coming our way. And that
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  led me to workforce, and I was fascinated
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  by the turnover and churn and the difference
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  from generation to generation.
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  And very quickly, I noticed that health care
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  had a big problem.
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  Skilled health care workers are already a shortage.
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  They've always been a shortage that's a that
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  has ebbed and flowed since the eighties. We
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  noticed that it wasn't getting better. It was
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  getting far worse. So I've spent the past
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  ten years at Orbis Education and now our
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  parent company, Grand Canyon Education, working very hard
• 1:01
  to fix drastic nursing shortages. Yeah. It's it's
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  great that you mentioned that because I wanna
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  come back to that and was doing some
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  research on this. And and and you certainly
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  know the numbers. Right? But, this was stuck
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  out to me. The average time to recruit
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  an experienced RN is right around the eighty
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  three day mark. In each 1% change
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  in RN turnover can cost or save an
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  average hospital roughly $289,000,
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  which is a staggering number and, of course,
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  the eighty three days as well.
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  How can stronger partnerships
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  between universities
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  and health care organizations
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  help build
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  a more sustainable pipeline because as the numbers
• 1:39
  are telling us, it needs to be more
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  sustainable.
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  Especially out here at the Becker CEO CFO
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  roundtable,
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  we're finally hearing the CFOs tuning in to
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  some of these sort of, obfuscated or layered
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  challenges that you can't necessarily see how being
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  short nurses is impacting the bottom line Yeah.
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  Until you peel back the layer. So
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  health systems, especially large and complex health systems,
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  are looking for a true workforce development partner.
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  So Grand Canyon Education now has 20 partners
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  in about 50 regional locations. So what we
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  do is exist to scale the programs that
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  are already in the market and their ability
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  to meet the market demand by helping them
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  create more workforce ready nurses. So the health
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  care organizations that we're working with, they're getting
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  access to these students while they're in the
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  program, these future nurses. So they have eyes
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  on them. They're able to recruit them. They're
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  able to enculturate them, and it allows them
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  to be an active participant
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  in the recruiting, retention, and the continuing education.
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  So overall, with all of our partners, we
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  see a decrease in vacancies, we see a
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  decrease in recruiting costs, and a decrease in
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  overall reliance on agency.
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  So it's really a more proactive approach
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  to this issue, which is so important, which
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  is so is is such a a game
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  changer, really. And you've touched on something important
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  too, which is optimization,
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  scalability. Right?
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  We know that there's a lot
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  of applicants that are well qualified that they
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  want to be part of health care in
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  The United States,
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  but they're turned away because there's limits. There's
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  they can't find a spot. They can't even
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  though they want to.
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  How are you helping those partners remove some
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  of those barriers that we're seeing right now
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  and expand access without necessarily, right, sacrificing the
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  quality and also the the students,
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  the outcomes that we wanna see from folks?
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  Yeah. So clinical education, especially nursing education,
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  is incredibly tricky. One, the cost structure is
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  incredibly different than any other programs. It's not
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  infinitely scalable.
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  There are ratios state mandated, organizationally mandated for
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  the amount of students that can be there
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  for one clinical professional.
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  It's very different or too difficult sometimes to
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  recruit clinical professionals Mhmm. To teach when they
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  could take a shift
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  working at a higher rate.
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  Then also there exists the issue that there
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  are not enough MSN prepared faculty
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  to physically educate the amount of students that
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  would like to become nurses. So it's really
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  a double sided problem.
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  So we really built the organization, the company,
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  and our competencies
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  around quality and student outcomes. We knew if
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  we could build from there, everything would work
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  out.
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  So what we really specialize in,
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  is an accelerated baccalaureate nursing program. So the
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  health care organization is getting the baccalaureate prepared
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  nursing nurse that they need.
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  And a lot of cases, this student is
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  nontraditional.
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  So we're granting an access point to a
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  student that otherwise would not have one. So
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  the accelerated
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  program itself and the hybrid modality
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  allow for a flexible,
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  and innovative clinical experience that it's great for
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  the student,
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  but also for the health care organization, they're
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  able to absorb and educate far more students
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  than they could in a typical scenario when
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  they work with us in this model. You
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  mentioned quality. Mhmm. I think it's really important,
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  not just the quality of the student experience
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  and the outcomes that speak for themselves,
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  but the academic rigor needs to match Of
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  course. That of the traditional on ground program.
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  And across all of the partners that GCE
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  and Orbis support, we have NCLEX pass rates
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  that are far above the industry standards well
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  into the mid nineties.
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  On top of that, when we partner with
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  our health care organization, we understand that everyone
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  wants to work with them, and everybody wants
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  to have students studying and learning in their
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  clinical experiences, and everybody would like for them
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  to hire them. So what we do is
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  really try to align the resources that a
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  university and our organization already have available.
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  So we provide continuing education resources, continuing education
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  opportunities,
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  in many markets, especially where MSN prepared nurses
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  are limited. We we provide opportunities for a
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  BSN, baccalaureate prepared nurse, to become an MSN
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  on scholarship
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  while
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  where the regulatory allows
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  getting a waiver to teach in the program.
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  So in that way, we're working with the
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  health care organization
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  to develop their own nurses into the future
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  education force while we're actually fixing their bedside
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  problem. Yeah. So it it really is something
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  that we've put a lot of thought into,
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  and our partners have been creating the solution.
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  So having 20 academic partners in 50 locations
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  means that we have 50 HCO locations who
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  are all telling us about their problems and
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  working with us to fix them. Yeah. And,
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  again, it comes back to what we're talking
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  about. It's just a more active proactive approach
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  to the issue, which is so so key.
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  And and I think we touched on this
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  a little bit too. We know that the
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  workforce is changing. Right? People have more expectations,
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  different expectations. There's a demand for more flexibility,
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  hybrid programs, right, that fit people that might
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  be transitioning careers. They might be re evolving
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  their careers.
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  You you mentioned you support 20 partners across
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  more than 50 locations, and and recent hybrid,
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  campus enrollment grew nearly 10%,
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  which is significant.
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  What design choices matter most in ensuring
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  hands on quality and and strong student support
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  is there within these models? Yeah. Well, I
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  mean, you hit the nail on the head.
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  It's a focus on the student experience.
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  So as a result of that, when we
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  grow and scale a program, we know that
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  we need to get the quality right. We
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  know that there's gonna need to be an
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  infrastructure
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  that is designed specifically to support student success
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  and ensure student success.
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  So as a result, we've invested very heavily
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  in,
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  competencies surrounding student success coaching,
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  tutoring.
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  And for all of our partners, we have
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  a very complex and robust data analytics suite
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  that allows us to identify potentially struggling students
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  and deploy resources for early intervention. So so
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  the first thing is making sure that if
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  a student's going to invest the time, energy,
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  and dollars to become a nurse, that we
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  give them every possible chance to be successful,
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  and we help them avoid every potential pitfall
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  that we've seen students go through, especially these
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  nontraditional students who might be recareering. They might
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  be busy working adults. They probably have a
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  lot of limitations and constraints on the way
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  that they're able to study and perform.
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  Secondly,
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  it really started from the partners with whom
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  we engaged. So the health care organizations
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  and the universities that we're doing business with
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  specifically understand that this is an academic
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  practice partnership. So they're geared up from just
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  just from, from the beginning of the relationship
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  to understand it's about innovation.
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  It's about making changes that might require trade
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  offs. They might be hard to adopt, and
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  they're gonna require a lot of perseverance and
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  a lot of persistence.
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  So most health care organizations I would say
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  all now, but I I don't know if
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  I can speak in a maximum that way.
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  But most health care organizations understand there aren't
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  enough nurses, and they understand that trying to
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  recruit
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  from the competitor down the street is just
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  taking from a different piece of the pie,
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  not necessarily increasing the size of the pie.
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  And now especially during COVID, it's revealed you
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  cannot rely on agency nurses.
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  It's a great steam valve for emergency, but
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  it becomes incredibly costly very quickly.
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  And the more reliant you are on agency
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  nurses, the more you are beholden when we
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  have some sort of adverse market event or,
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  something massive,
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  like like the the the COVID pandemic.
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  So these partners, they understand that if they
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  wanna get the nontraditional students, they have to
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  meet them where they are. So they have
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  to meet them where they are in life,
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  but they also have to meet them with
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  a certain amount of flexibility
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  that they can accommodate in into their lifestyle.
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  So most of our students are nontraditional,
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  and the programs are built from the ground
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  up to accommodate this. So when I say
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  nontraditional, they might be someone who is recareering,
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  starting it down a new career path. They
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  might be former military,
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  looking for, you know, how they're gonna come
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  back and continue to contribute in a meaningful
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  way. In a lot of cases, they are
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  advanced transfer students Mhmm. Who either did not
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  understand they had a path to nursing, have
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  accumulated the requisite credits to now get into
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  a nursing program, and don't have a space
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  where they are from a capacity issue. Or
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  in a lot of cases, they'll be a
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  highly competitive student at an incredibly competitive nursing
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  program. Yeah. So if you have a three
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  six and you're going into junior year and
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  everyone in front of you has a three
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  seven, well, you'll make a great nurse, but
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  you're not getting into the nursing program. So
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  in the past, it was finish your degree
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  in something you don't want to get,
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  and then take out more loans and then
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  go back for nursing. So these programs are
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  really designed to say, if you have the
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  requisite classes and coursework
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  to be a competitive student, we will build
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  the capacity for you. Yeah. Absolutely.
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  I think we'd be remissed if we didn't
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  talk about we talked so much about change,
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  but I think we'd be remissed if we
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  didn't talk about the the impact of technology
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  and how this is all evolving,
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  in terms of shaping the future of health
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  care, but specifically health care education and workforce
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  development.
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  How do you see technology evolving this? So
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  technological change is a universal constant, and it's
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  accelerating. And the rate at which accelerating is
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  actually growing exponentially as well. So technology is
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  everywhere, and it's always driving the change in
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  business and education.
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  In the environment we're in, there's clinical limitations
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  both in educating the nurses and and and
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  also in nurses performing at the bedside that
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  are obviously
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  they create ample opportunities to leverage technology.
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  So we have invested in a lot of
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  proprietary technology. We work with a lot of
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  technological partners.
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  In our own shop, we do a lot
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  of AR, XR, so augmented reality, general virtual
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  reality as a whole.
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  And as we see the industry and the
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  education nurses and particularly the NCLEX examination moving
• 10:55
  more towards simulated experiences,
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  we are positioning our partners to be ahead
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  of the curve and make sure that as
• 11:02
  those changes happen, they don't experience that all
• 11:04
  too common dip in NCLEX when there's a
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  change in the questions or the way it's
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  performed. So technology is huge, and it's ever
• 11:10
  present in our business. But I think what
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  GCE
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  is really able to do across our 20
• 11:16
  partners,
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  in in all these locations
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  is to understand if we adopt a technological
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  innovation,
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  what is the secondary? What is the tertiary
• 11:25
  downstream impact?
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  And what will the net net be in
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  terms of an organization's ability to build a
• 11:31
  pipeline of talent to recruit, retain, and educate
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  nurses? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, this is certainly not
• 11:36
  simulated or augmented.
• 11:38
  Steve, it's so great to have you. Thanks
• 11:39
  for being here. Alright. Thank you for having
• 11:40
  me, Lucas. Yes. Absolutely. It's great to see
• 11:42
  you. And, again, we also want to thank
• 11:44
  you for tuning in and for Arbors Education
• 11:46
  for sponsoring today's episode. We hope you have
• 11:48
  a great rest of your day. Make sure
• 11:50
  to tune into future episodes from Becker's Healthcare.