Healthcare Initiative

Oregon Community College Healthcare Initiative

Update and Current Work

About the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development:

Vision Oregon has world-class citizens who are educated, skilled, working and contributing members of society.

Mission Statement Contribute leadership and resources to increase the skills, knowledge and career opportunities of Oregonians.

The Oregon Community College Healthcare Workforce Initiative is a legislative investment in the advancement of healthcare education and directly aligns with the vision and mission of the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development.

Overview: The Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development (CCWD) Legislatively-approved budget for the 07-09 biennium included $2,205 million funding for policy option package (POP 108), hereafter referred to as the CCWD Health Initiative. To expand both statewide and local capacity and access to allied health and nursing education programs and courses, the focus was on a statewide and distance delivery approach. The stated goal of this Initiative was to enable all seventeen community colleges to meet their own local healthcare workforce needs by providing access to programs and curricula through collaboration and cooperation across colleges.

The CCWD Health Initiative had three specific areas of focus. Those were outlined and funded as follows: 1) Program and Courses: ($1,250,000) a. Program development ($300,000) b. Simulation equipment and training ($200,000) c. Course development ($100,000) d. Statewide distance learning provider support ($150,000) e. Distance technology ($500,000) 2) Program sharing: ($200,000) a. Program sharing agreements ($100,000) b. Career pathways ($100,000) 3) Faculty and student support: ($750,000) a. Faculty training to develop distance programs ($60,000) b. Faculty training to deliver distance programs ($65,000) c. Clinical preceptor training program development ($125,000) d. Student support activities ($500,000)

Summary of work: Work was successfully accomplished in all of the components of the CCWD Health Initiative. With the overall goal of development of statewide distance delivery to meet local community needs, recommendations were made and approved and projects contracted and implemented. Overall, there were a total of 27 grant contracts written to accomplish the goals of the Initiative. 2

Highlights: A major accomplishment of this Initiative has been to focus Oregon’s community colleges on the benefits of statewide cooperative efforts to develop and provide educational opportunities in the health education field. The concept for the Initiative was based on the AHOSST (Allied Healthcare for Oregon: Seeking Solutions Through Technology) Report, a joint effort of the Community College Healthcare Action Plan (CCHAP), Portland Community College and all community colleges through a grant from the Department of Commerce. The report was published in late 2006 with recommendations for the use of distance and distributed models to deliver healthcare education throughout the state. CCWD’s Health Initiative provided the impetus and the funds for community colleges to implement AAHOST recommendations and undertake the challenging work of collaboration to leverage funds, expertise and capacity to meet both local and statewide demand for healthcare workforce education.

Another significant accomplishment of the Initiative was the development of the “Community College Healthcare Education Alliance (CCHEA). Prior to this Initiative, the Allied Health Deans and Directors from the community colleges had never met to discuss common issues and to work together on projects. Developing the bylaws for their own group as well as a consortium agreement on how they will continue to work together has been a significant result of the CCWD Health Initiative. With the formation of this group, future activities and discussions around the statewide and local needs of community colleges for healthcare professional education programs will be more organized, focused and will lead to better results for the citizens and students of Oregon.

Programs and Courses:  Development of distance and distributed learning in Health Informatics, Basic Nursing Assistant, Mental Health and Addictions Counseling, Practical Nursing, Pharmacy Technician and several other allied health care areas.  Simulation activities and increased clinical experience capacity with training for equipment technicians and for use of simulation equipment.  Support for distance delivery of programs and courses with professional development/technical assistance for faculty (end-users) and professional development for technicians. This included an investment in virtual classroom capacity for all colleges where didactic and demonstration instruction can occur.  Bilingual Medical Interpreter program initiated with Cascades East AHEC (Area Health Education Center).

Program Sharing:  Program agreements for statewide degree and distance offerings for programs and courses. Student access (particularly in rural Oregon) and transferability is enhanced.  Development of healthcare career pathways in Oregon’s community colleges.

Faculty and Student Support:  Training for faculty in development of online courses and delivery of online courses.  Training for clinical preceptors increasing capacity for clinical experiences.  Development of Basic Healthcare Education certificate to provide early access to healthcare education for emerging and transitioning workforce. The courses in the certificate are foundational to most healthcare fields.  Investment in online student advising including development of online success courses and statewide license for virtual conferencing.

Lessons Learned: Development of programs takes a significant amount of time, especially when community colleges are faced with faculty shortages for delivering their current programs. In the case of healthcare program faculty, many of the schools are currently facing faculty shortages due to overall workforce shortages. For that reason, adding faculty to do the development work was not a possible option.

As CCWD and the community colleges move towards more and more statewide programs, a continuing consideration will be timelines and how they fit with guidelines and approval processes for statewide degrees and programs. The concept of statewide programs and degrees is excellent and becoming more understood and embraced by the community colleges. As more programs and degrees are developed for statewide delivery and consortiums are formed to manage these programs, there will be a need to constantly review the statewide approval and consortium agreement documents to remove barriers to effective collaborations that meet the goals of the degrees and programs. 3

Goals For 2009-2011  Continued strategic planning for healthcare education with the Community College Healthcare Education Alliance and appropriate workforce representatives, policy-makers, and community stakeholders.  Enhance and increase statewide degree and distance offerings by building on the work accomplished to date.  Increase capacity for clinical site management and clinical experience.  Increase faculty capacity through additional professional development and strategies to incent new faculty to enter system.

Current Activities:  Pilot of Basic Healthcare Education Certificate- this project is focused on basic healthcare knowledge and skill development for emerging and incumbent healthcare workers. The pilot is being conducted by Rogue Community College in partnership with several Rogue Valley high schools and Asante’ Health and includes distance delivery.  Launch of Distance and distributed program offerings in Occupational Therapy Assistant, Practical Nursing, Mental Health, Pharmacy Technician, Nurse Assistant and short-term Health Informatics training.  Pilot of statewide simulation program for Emergency Medical Services including curriculum development and deployment of new pediatric care requirement.  Development of statewide clinical experience site management through pilot with Emergency Medical Services and Radiation Technology as well as all levels of nursing.  Expansion of Bilingual Medical Interpreter training to three additional community colleges.  Launch of Faculty development opportunities through the Oregon Consortium of Nurse Education, Community College Healthcare Education Alliance, and the Community College Health Informatics Consortium. This currently includes use of learning management systems for distance programs, best practices in instruction, and use of web-based applications for conferencing and student advising.