WorkforceRx

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, registered healthcare apprenticeships are up 43% in the last five years as employers turn to “earn while you learn” models to fill staffing gaps that traditional degree pipelines aren't filling fast enough. On this episode of WorkforceRx, we're going to highlight an institution that's a great example of this trend by speaking with Michael Jones, Director of Workforce Development at University of California San Francisco Health, the second largest employer in the Bay Area. In that role, he’s led initiatives to prepare historically underrepresented communities for healthcare careers in partnership with employers, educators, and other stakeholders. "Business strategy does not have to be separate from community benefit and altruism. I think they're one and the same," he tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Tune in to learn about Jones’ newest effort, a compressed radiology technologist program built with City College of San Francisco and GE Healthcare aimed at meeting growing demand for imaging as the state’s population ages. You’ll also hear why he thinks career pathways beat salary in recruitment, the different ways USCF Health supports incumbent employees and external community members joining the team, and how to make pathway programs sustainable at scale. UCSF Health

It would take a single primary care physician 26.7 hours per day to deliver all the recommended care for the patients that he or she is responsible for. That impossible math is the starting point for a major California Healthcare Foundation report examining why access to primary care keeps falling short, even in a state where nearly everyone has insurance. “In our culture we tend to look at the new and the shiny and the technological, so we're at this crossroads where primary care has been under-resourced,” says the report’s lead author, Dr. Diane Rittenhouse, a senior fellow at Mathematica and professor of Family Medicine and Health Policy at the University of California San Francisco. While recruitment, retention, and training were identified as key issues to address, the role of payment to shape what’s possible in each of those categories stood out to researchers. "Practices hire the teams they can afford, not necessarily the teams that patients need, and training programs train for jobs that exist in the marketplace,” she tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Beyond fixing the payment system, this revealing conversation also explores why practices of all types describe the same hiring struggle, what educators can do to build trust on care teams, and where AI fits into primary care's future. Report On Strengthening California’s Primary Care Team Workforce