Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy was published by The New York Times on March 6. This article by Peter S. Goodman and Jack Healy sparked my thinking about the unique position health care leaders "enjoy" in a grim economy which has not (yet) landed a direct hit on our industry.
Everyone's talking about what to do about rising unemployment all around us. Except, of course, those who are talking about finding employment because it has impacted them personally. So I have been trying to put my mind the perspective of health care leaders on this. For us, unemployment is a huge problem to which, for a change, we are largely not contributing - at least directly. So what is the strategic implication of this unique situation for health care leaders?
- Should we be developing strategies to manage layoffs when they eventually come to our industry in a big way?
- Do we need to be thinking ahead to how a large unemployed population will impact our services, resources, and revenues?
- Should we be thinking about how we might leverage newly available, and vast, human resources to advance our strategic goals while simultaneously contributing to increasing employment?
Yes
The answer, of course, is "all of the above." This blog has already addressed the first two issues, among other recession implications for health care, in the Health Care Leadership in a Recession series. But the third - what are the possible creative and constructive opportunities for health care within the unemployment misery - is today's topic.
If the need for health care products and services is unlikely to diminish, and to a large degree these are not discretionary purchases, it seems reasonable to assume that at the least our industry will continue to require talented human resources into the foreseeable future. So the existence of a large pool of talented and under-employed resources could be put to advantage, perhaps for the health care industry and the economy as a whole.
Connect the dots
The Times article attributed the following observations to Andrew Stettner, Deputy Director of the National Employment Law Project: "The stimulus spending bill signed last month includes $4.5 billion for job training... In current dollars, the nation devoted the equivalent of $20 billion a year to job training in 1979, compared with only $6 billion last year." So as a health care leadership thinker I tried to connect the following dots: a large available human talent pool; an industry that provides essential products and services; new Federal funding for enhanced connectivity, electronic records, and training; existing under-resourced hospital IS departments; and a new health care redesign initiative from Washington. What I came up with was a list of new and provocative questions.
Silver Lining or Golden Opportunity?
Should we consider a strategy of investing creatively in training the "workforce of the future?" Should we consider the jobless to be a talent pool that can be mined and retooled for those who can staff and advance health care IS capabilities? Can significant numbers of unemployed be trained - in part using Federal funding - to deliver, and help us transition to, operating the connectivity the Feds are also funding? Can a large scale mobilization to electronic action actually deliver the elusive savings, efficiencies, and systematic improvements that will permit us to absorb higher levels of staffing and thus contribute to turning around the economy?
Do the math. If each of the over 4000 hospitals, 130 medical schools, and 300 largest multi-specialty groups in the US trained/employed an average of just 5 people each to support IS, we would be looking at over 20,000 newly created jobs. If the average was 10, it would be 50,000 jobs. If this approach was expanded to other providers of health care, health related services and health product industries, could it be 100,000 or 200,000 jobs?
Do we need to hear, and heed, the call for health care to come to the rescue?
Leave a comment