Virtual training could help fill gaps in key support staff roles
With the industry still reeling from shortages in certain roles, a Mount Sinai-Stepful collaboration could offer important lessons.
Healthcare staffing, which took a significant hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, remains under stress today. Shortages and the resulting costs continue to afflict hospitals today.
The months-long challenges of the widespread pandemic in the U.S. and worldwide highlighted the fragile nature of manpower provision in acute-care and other facilities. In the short term, front-line caregivers were heroes, putting their personal health at risk in treating patients when little was known about the disease and how it spread.
Over the long haul, staff have faced – and continue to deal with – long-term consequences, such as susceptibility to fatigue and exhaustion that has led to increased resignation rates, higher burnout rates and other psycho-social effects.
However, one of the creative strategies employed during the pandemic – virtual conferencing and education – may throw staff-strapped organizations a lifeline, if an approach by a Northeast healthcare system can be replicated by others.
Staffing costs dwarf other expenses
Staffing shortages have been felt across the professional spectrum at most hospitals for more than a decade, with the pandemic serving as an accelerant. Staff vacancies now are being reported for a variety of roles, ranging from physicians to nurses to ancillary and other support positions.
Staffing gaps and the resulting stop-gap strategies to resolve them are big line-items for hospitals. Recent data from the American Hospital Association notes that labor costs dominate hospital costs – in 2024, facilities paid $890 billion for labor, representing 56 percent of total expenses, dwarfing supplies ($202 billion, 13 percent) and pharmaceutical expenses ($144 billion, 9 percent).
Strategies to fill staffing gaps are often very expensive and don’t solve underlying issues. For replacing clinicians, hiring locum tenens professionals can fill gaps, but often at premium cost. For clinicians, interest in these temporary work arrangements has reached its highest level in more than a decade, according to a report released this month by Weatherby Healthcare.
Similarly, nurses can work outside of a traditional hired role through temporary nursing gigs, filling providers’ nursing gaps. For both doctors and nurses, these types of approaches can provide flexibility and options for work-life balance.
But for some roles in healthcare organizations, there’s no similar strategy for filling roles in clinical support. While training requirements for these roles are less stringent than for medical professionals, these roles still require some education to meet work demands at hospitals.
Virtual education initiative
This month, Mount Sinai Health System announced a partnership with Stepful, a healthcare education company, that offers a platform on which learners can receive training for in-demand roles in medical organizations.
The partnership between New York-based Mount Sinai and Stepful is aimed at broadening educational opportunities to more people, helping them to get specific training for roles, to get certified and job-ready, doing so through flexible, learner-paced online training.
Stepful says it has more than 9,000 successful graduates. For example, its medical assistant course lasts five months, prepares students to pass the Certified Clinical Medical Assistant exam of the National Healthcareer Association (NHA CCMA), including exposing students with 80 to 160 hours of in-person clinical hours. The company touts using live instructor-led classes, flexible learning and a supportive community to help students.
The Mount Sinai-Stepful collaboration will seek to establish a specialized patient care associate training program “aimed at strengthening the clinical support workforce and expanding the pipeline of ancillary staff across the New York City metropolitan area to meet current and future care needs.”
The initial design of the program calls for the implementation of a 12-week curriculum focusing on core competencies that include phlebotomy, EKG test administration and direct patient care.
Potential for expansion?
The program looks to supplement a key part of Mount Sinai’s workforce strategy of building a sustainable, community-based workforce that’s trained and competent in healthcare roles. Doing so will involve a combination of the company’s training infrastructure with the health system’s clinical input.
“Mount Sinai is focused on strengthening the healthcare workforce through innovative training and development approaches,” said Jane Maksoud, RN, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of the Mount Sinai. “This collaboration supports the development of a broader, more sustainable pipeline of ancillary staff from the communities we serve.”
The goals of the program – expanding access to healthcare careers while filling crucial roles throughout the healthcare organization – also match up with the needs of other provider organizations that are dealing with shortages of trained staff members filling ancillary and support roles critical to day-to-day operations.
A virtual training approach also should interest smaller organizations – especially those in rural and underserved areas, or in high-density metropolitan settings – that struggle to find and retain staff. As such, the Mount Sinai-Stepful collaboration bears watching to see whether virtual training initiatives can be expanded or adapted for other venues.
Fred Bazzoli is the Editor in Chief of Health Data Management.