According to 2012 data from the Rural Health Research Center, only 73% of residents live within a one-hour drive to a community college offering allied health coursework. In comparison, 99% of urban residents live within a one-hour drive to a community college offering an allied health program.
Depending on the specific allied healthcare role, there are even fewer training options. For example, only 33.4% of rural communities are within an hour of a community college having a Pharmacy Technician/ Assistant program.
Not surprisingly, communities that have trouble training healthcare workers also have trouble hiring them. Of 7,200 federally designated health professional shortage areas, 3 out of 5 are in rural regions.
When you normalize for population size, the allied healthcare crisis in rural areas is even clearer. For example, the Rural Health Research Center found in 2021 that the number of home health aides (HHAs) per 100,000 people in rural areas was around one-third the number of HHAs per 100,000 residents in urban areas.
It’s not easy filling allied healthcare roles in a school desert, and employers in those communities need new strategies for expanding the pool of qualified candidates.
Online Allied Healthcare Training – The Great Equalizer
The most effective way to overcome allied healthcare courses not being offered locally is by embracing eLearning. The 2024 Industry Outlook Report by the National Healthcareer Association found 60% of healthcare employers offer online training. It’s already an accepted best practice for building a sustainable pipeline of new allied health workers, and in many instances, it’s the only viable path forward to build your rural workforce.
Through asynchronous online learning, MedCerts has trained over 100,000 students to earn nationally recognized credentials and certifications. MedCerts offers 23 different online healthcare and medical certification programs. As students learn online at their own pace, they don’t have to quit their existing jobs while they’re training to backfill an employer’s vacant allied healthcare position.
This turnkey solution is flexible enough to offer rural employers a few different pathways for expanding their allied healthcare workforce, including through Train-and-Hire, Upskilling, and Apprenticeship programs.
Develop Local Talent Through K-12 Apprenticeship Programs
The Dickinson Medicine Shoppe is a North Dakota pharmacy representing a rural community of 25,000 residents. In 2021, owner Brandi Ollerman was struggling to find enough pharmacy technicians to keep the branch properly staffed. Most local students saw their only path to certification as traveling to a college in eastern North Dakota, and once certified, they never returned to Dickinson.
Looking to create a more sustainable solution for finding pharmacy technicians to work in Dickinson, Ollerman teamed up with Roughrider Area Career and Technology Center and MedCerts Partner Solutions. They offered students at 12 local high schools the opportunity to take a Pharmacy Technician training course, as elective or career and technical education credits, counting towards graduation requirements.
11th-grade and 12th-grade students accepted into the program worked one hour a day on the online MedCerts coursework, under a Health Science teacher’s supervision. In addition, students completed 160 hours of hands-on pharmacy experience at The Medicine Shoppe, under the supervision of Ollerman.
Over a 4-year period, 8 high school students either finished or are in the process of finishing the program, which takes 9-12 months to complete. There’s been a 100% retention rate of the students The Medicine Shoppe hired as employees, meaning the pharmacy successfully addressed their pharmacy technician shortage.
Find More Workforce Stability Through Educational Opportunities
Retaining allied healthcare talent is often a major challenge in rural areas because of the issue of compensation. A study published in the Journal of Allied Health of 8 allied healthcare professions found on average, the rural hourly wage is 10.3% less than the hourly urban wage.
This was definitely a problem at San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center (SLV), an 800-employee, 40-bed hospital in Alamosa, Colorado, where their allied healthcare employees kept quitting for better-paying jobs in urban areas. While there was enough demand for training new healthcare professionals at local colleges, those colleges had a similar problem retaining teachers.
Needing a new educational pathway, SLV turned to online training and Medcerts Partner Solutions. Certified Surgical Technologist and Certified Sterile Processing Technician were the positions that most urgently needed filling. Recruiting from a pool of recent high school students and existing employees previously in non-clinical roles, SLV offered to train recruits for free through MedCerts, in exchange for students agreeing to work at SLV for a period of at least two years.
Training was completed in as little as 18 weeks, through a combination of the online curriculum and 3X a week on-the-job clinical training at SLV. 7 students successfully completed the program, with 4 becoming certified surgical techs and 3 students becoming surgical/sterile processing technicians. 100% of program enrollees passed their certification and still work at SLV.
Conclusion
While it’s definitely more of a challenge finding and retaining qualified allied healthcare workers in rural areas compared to in big cities, online learning is the most effective tool for leveling the playing field. There’s finally a path forward for training the next generation of local allied healthcare workers, even in communities that can’t offer in-person training courses.
Want more information about how MedCerts Partner Solutions can help your rural healthcare facility train allied healthcare professionals? Contact us today at [email protected] to learn more!
